For Your Kindness
by Doctor Shemp
Summary: As far as you knew, you were doing the right thing. You turned the other cheek. What a terrible monster you are.  Post-BS2
1. North Atlantic, August 1971

The ocean is a lonely place. It's wide, cold, and empty for miles-dark as night at all hours, and silent as the grave. Under it's steely surface, there's great expanses of simply... nothing. Nothingness like nowhere else on Earth; one might as well be in another world. Rock and ice make the landscape, while the whistle of wind is replaced by the hourly calls of far-off whales. They're too far away to be company, and it's not like they'd take to strangers anyway.

That's what he was: a stranger. The first and last of a subspecies no god would make for their kingdom, unless as a punishment for unruly subjects, was cursed to wander the frozen northern seas for the rest of his life. (Which, according to his research, could be at least ninety or one-hundred years.) Slow, even strokes of his webbed feet and long, finned tail could carry him for miles on little food or warmth; to where, he didn't know. To far away icy shores of Russia or Alaska, perhaps, to feed and regain his strength.

How fascinating it was, despite his horror, to be a creature like him. Amphibious, with both lungs and gills, flexible, nearly a long tube of nothing but muscle, and with remarkable mental abilities far beyond any ADAM mutation he had ever observed, he was a creature of immense power and boundless intelligence. He was a miracle, an abomination, a god. If he wanted to, he could use his ten-ton bulk to smash apart ships and steal huge masses of fish, or use his psychic powers to influence the small, feeble minds of humans. But he didn't want to: his ambition had gone away with his madness.

His madness had disappeared soon after he was released. Why, he didn't know: there was a good chance that he was still very mad, but the quiet and peace of the ocean had calmed his rage, making him the benign sea monster he was now. Alex the Great was dead and gone, but so was Doctor Gilbert Alexander. Who was he now? Just... a creature, he supposed. He didn't have a real _identity _anymore-it wasn't like anyone would ever recognize him. Even though he still had his human mind and all of his memories, both were becoming more distant every day. The face of his mother was beginning to get foggy, and he now knew more about the best places to graze for ADAM rich plants than theoretical morality.

ADAM was even beginning to taste bitter to him. Fish was better, and easier on his ailing body. He lacked flat teeth to grind up the plants, and the slugs were too small and few to catch. The pleasure that the chemical gave him was fading away like his human memories, giving away to horrible pain whenever he ingested the stuff. He preferred shark.

For months, he spent his time drifting with the currents. Barely moving his fins, Gil glided along through the frigid water, protected by his thick blubber and barely minding the cold. Every once in a while, his head would break the surface and he'd look around with his weak eyes; he'd see lights in the distance, ships and towns on the shore. Mostly, he'd just see darkness.

Sleeping in caves or just under the ice pack, Gil had long days (as he only traveled by night) to consider his world as it was now. It was very strange having such long, malformed limbs and a tail, and breathing through gills was like being a sponge being constantly filled and squeezed out. Swimming was boring. Being alone was boring.

When Delta had done what he did, Gil hadn't been thankful. Alex the Great had felt triumphant over the slowwitted tin man, having tricked him into sparing his life. Delta had listened, as Alex had known he would, to the pathetic creature's pleas for its life, and had pressed "release" instead of "terminate." The loathsome creature that was Alex the Great had swum away laughing as Fontaine Futuristics collapsed around Delta's ears. He wasn't laughing now. Now he looked back in anger at the monster he had been. At the monster he _still was_.

The unavoidable truth was that he was trapped. For the rest of his life, he would remain a massive blob of pale, slimy flesh with a few fins to push itself around with. Living on a diet of fish and crustaceans he dug out of the silt with twisted, webbed hands, swimming around and around in circles like a goldfish in a tank, and considering things that he might do with his miserable existence, he didn't have _anything _to really live for. How did his life come to this? How did Gilbert Alexander get reduced to the life of a massive lungfish?

It could only be his fault. Curse him for looking to the sky and wishing for a better world.

###

Winter was setting in.

It began when the walruses began to flee. It was on the second day of the full moon, as the moon was Gil's only way of telling time. The great shapes of the tusked beasts splashed into the waves, sending shutters down Gil's lateral line. The sea came alive with a crackling net of electricity from all the warm-blooded bodies heading south to Iceland. Gil watched them from the mouth of his dark burrow in the face of an iceberg, blowing water through his gills as he fought the urge to charge out and devour a pup or two or fifteen. His stomach was empty, as all the fish were long gone to the south. He hadn't tasted anything finer than bait squid in weeks.

He couldn't eat a walrus. Too much blood, too much fighting. Fish were a nice, clean, easy meal, without any of the shrieking or struggling.

Huffing, Gil slid out of his cave with a mighty swish of his tail. A long trail of silt followed him like a contrail, mixing with dead skin and other foul bits that always floated around him. He glided gracefully through the thin, cold water, shivering and popping his many new joints that were often stiff. The hundreds of walruses bobbed and swam in great masses, churning the water with their weight and numbers, and Gil picked out some individuals he knew rather personally. There was a beachmaster with one broken tusk, and a smaller male who had the beachmaster's missing tusk permanently stuck in his side. Gil had been watching the herd like a voyeur, trying to fight off boredom and despair with research. For a few hours out of the day, he could make observations that no other scientist could have made, and it made him feel like himself again.

Even through the chaos of the migration and the growing dread cold of the water, Gil went about his nightly routine. He swam across the bay, which had thicker ice over the surface than last week, and came up to a large rock. Taking a deep breath of water, he heaved himself with all of his limbs onto the rock. His white, transparent claws scratched into the stone, and he pulled himself up into the air.

The surface world hit him with a chilly blast of razor sharp, icy wind. His pale, slimy skin tensed and twitched in the elements, and he had to shut his eyes against the powder snow whipping in the vicious gale. It hadn't been this cold in a long, long while.

Water ran out of his gills, and he took a long draught of the cold air. His eyes swam open, protected by a gray membrane, like a shark's eye. Everything went in and out of focus.

This was his time, up here on the rock. The time he had to breathe air and feel... not normal, but better. Something familiar, like breathing air, made him feel a little warmer on the inside.

But he didn't just come up here to mourn and breathe. There was something else he indulged in.

At midnight, every night, a ferry went by Gil's iceberg home. It was a large ship, with a steel bow for cutting through ice. Gil didn't know who was on the boat, but the fact that someone _was _on the boat, someone with eyes, made him crawl up on that rock every night.

Stretched out luxuriously, Gil gave a long, mournful cry. It sounded like a whale's call, low and song-like, then became very high-pitched and keening, like a woman screaming. He opened his huge, fang-rimmed mouth, bellowing with full lungs at the ship, propping himself up on his hindmost limbs. The cry lasted for fifteen seconds, long enough to leave an impression.

A yell came up from the ship. Gil's sharp ears picked up on panicked screams from frightened sailors up on the deck. He only knew a little Icelandic, less and less every day, but he could pick up the word for "sea monster" quiet easily. A screeching laugh ripped out of his wet lungs, making the sailors panic even more. They screamed like frightened children, scrambling for weapons or just staring dumbly into the water, gaping like fish at the glorious image of Alex the Great.

So maybe Gil wasn't entirely sane yet.

After a few minutes, Gil grew bored and slid back into the water, giving the sailors one last glimpse of his smooth, transparent pink skin before vanishing into the dark, icy soup. Bubbles blew out of his nostrils as he breathed the air out of his lungs, chuckling to himself. He rolled onto his back and pushed along with his tail.

Every night, Gil haunted the ships passing through the ice pack, threatening them with frightening cries and personal appearances, feeling very clever when he surprised them. At first, they had only reacted with shouts to their captains and confusion, but now they started screaming if he so much as broke the water with a spout of spray.

Gil loved his hobby. He didn't know why, but it made him feel better.

From below, he watched the black belly of the ship pull off in a frightened burst of speed, allowing a few more bursts of radar to bounce off his bulk before diving deeper and out of their range. Look at me, he thought to himself. And be afraid.

Being a sea monster, there wasn't a whole lot Gil could do to interact with people besides scaring them. The sight of human faces filled his empty heart. The terror he could shake out of seasoned seamen was an added bonus to his maddened ego.

Twisting like a synchronized swimmer, Gil dove deeper and deeper, out of the eye of the moon. His misshapen limbs flicked, pushing him along at great speeds into the blackness, to the only place where there were still fish. His tiny eyes were useless at this depth, so he closed them, and found his way with clicks and whines from deep in his throat.

_Scrrreeeee... Urrrrrrr-ur-ur-ur-ur... _The sounds echoed off the rocks and back to the keen ear-slits on the sides of his huge melon-head. He flicked his short neck, scanning the sea floor for signs of life. The blackness pressing in on him made him feel strange, contrasting the vibrant map of the landscape in his mind, and the sense of direction he had from all the strange gatherings of fluid and alien systems in his long, emaciated body. Breathing slowly through his gaping mouth, he took larger and larger gulps of water as he went down to the depths that had thin oxygen just as the highest mountain peaks have thin air.

Fishing was hard these days. He was losing blubber by hundreds of pounds every week. His ribs poked through his slimy skin. A sharp, strangely shaped hip bone protruded from his side. Knobs stuck up from his tail.

Weight was melting him almost as fast as his memories. He didn't remember the face of the woman who had done this to him, or the girl he had raised almost as his own, then watched as she became the object of worship for a crowd of filthy wretches. Bowing, chanting... the traditions of the Family were lost on him. His own family was lost to him.

Emotions became simpler. Memories became faint.

The fish were the only thing that mattered.

###

Weeks went by, and the water grew colder and colder. Huge stalactites of ice dangled into the ceiling of the ocean like sharp briars; Gil nursed wounds on his back from the sharp icebergs, whimpering with pain as he slept during the day. Tired and hungry, he had not eaten in three days.

Thoughts were becoming as scarce as fish. Gil drifted along in the freezing water during the day now, despite the pain that lanced his sensitive eyes.

He stopped his midnight raids on the Icelandic barges, forgetting about the rock and the taste of air in his mouth. Every once and a while, he'd break the surface and let the sun warm his freezing, cold-blooded body. Long, red streaks went down his back from the scorching fingers of light. He didn't care all that much, because the fish were the only thing that mattered. The last scraps of his human memories clawed at the edges of his consciousness as he drifted along, snapping up fish whenever he came to them. He saw bits and pieces, nothing whole or coherent, unreal and strange. A woman with cold blue eyes. A beautiful child. Machines, wires and gears. A man standing in front of a mirror, struggling to fit into a three piece suit, shaking and looking into his own face with complete terror, eyes wide, brows shuttering, his mouth open to a thin slit. His eyes were filmy and out of focus.

Who was this man?

The thought made him chuckle, and bubbles floated up from his jagged mouth. How funny that man was. He was far too fat for that suit, and he looked so scared! Why on Earth was he so afraid of that suit or that mirror, when he was so well fed and warm? He didn't have anything to worry about in the warm, soft walls of wherever he was. An opulent castle, with comfortable furniture and armed guards standing outside the door. He shouldn't be afraid of a little fat around his gut. Gil wished he had that much to spare.

As winter closed in around him, Gil began to wander farther and farther away from the caves and fossilized reefs that kept him hidden from the prying eyes of locals, swimming out into open water and almost being snagged in nets. One morning, he found himself out in a great, vast expanse of clear water, alone and close to unconsciousness. His back broke the surface as he swam, his tail stirring up foam, ice forming on the sail running from the back of his neck to the tip of his tail. Spray and steam rose up from his head when it rose over the rough waves.

A monster alone, long, sad moans rising and falling through the quiet sea. Directionless, tired.

Today, Gil was lost in another one of his flashbacks. In his mind, he was watching the strange man again: now he was in a smaller room that was lit softly with candles. A woman sat at a desk, punching the keys of a typewriter delicately and with bizarre efficiency.

"How are you feeling today, Dr. Alexander?" The woman asked dryly. Her eyes stayed on her paper.

The man swallowed, smacking his lips as if he were having trouble breathing. "Very poorly, Dr. Lamb. I've started having nightmares. I'm feeling very sick, very nauseous."

Without turning around, the woman nodded and made a footnote on a piece of paper next to her: _Nauseous, psychosis developing._

Quivering, the man stumbled closer to her, putting out his hand, which was large and meaty. Thin skin stretched between the short fingers, dripping with strange slime. The woman pulled away, still not looking up, her face unchanged.

"Please do not touch me, doctor. You could contaminate the experiment," she said.

Rejection hit the man's face like a physical blow. His sagging jowls hung limp from his face, and those gray eyes lost focus again. He was turning a sickly tint of pale yellow, and sweat was beading on his forehead. Those large hands clenched together.

"Wh-what do you suppose we do now?" He asked. "Will I... well, I suppose I will. If I am not a Utopian, then I must be a common Splicer."

Something resembling amusement crossed the woman's face. Finally, she set down her work and turned to face him. "No, Dr. Alexander. You are far from that," she said. "Look at yourself."

He looked down, putting his flipper-like hands in his pockets. "I prefer not to."

"How much weight have you gained?"

"About twenty three kilograms."

She nodded in that horrible knowing way again, and made more notes. The man looked about to vomit. A tear ran down the side of his face as he became hysterical.

"I don't want to go insane, Dr. Lamb!" He choked. "You can't do this to Eleanor!"

"I've done more studies. Nothing will happen to Eleanor," Dr. Lamb said. Her face was serene, like a saint's.

"What about me?" The man asked, his voice squeaking. "What will become of poor, poor Gilbert?"

Frowning, Dr. Lamb knitted her fingers in front of her. She looked very bored now, as if this man was bothering her for a raise.

"I've predicted that your condition will continue to deteriorate," she said calmly. "You may be in some discomfort for several weeks."

"Then what?"

An eyebrow went up on the woman's face. "You will be in discomfort for several weeks, Dr. Alexander, while your body adjusts. In the mean time, I will begin the process on Eleanor, and you will assist me for as long as you are able. You should not question the will of the people."

A gurgling noise came from the man. His flipper hands came out of his pockets, one holding an handkerchief, which he dabbed on his face. Thick, sticky-looking stuff clung to the fine silk square, leaving a yellow blotch. He didn't say anything; the only sound in the chamber for several moments was his pained, labored breathing.

"I won't," he finally said. "The Family is the most important thing. I'm just very uncomfortable."

A calm, kind smile spread across Lamb's face. "You will not know discomfort in time, Doctor. You will be one with the sacred daughter and all will be well."

Gil had the feeling that the man believed her entirely. His face relaxed, and a little smile formed under his dripping cheeks, as if everything was fine again. He walked out of the room, his gait stiff and uncomfortable, his hands shaking before sliding back into his pockets. From his blurry view of the scene, Gil could see the man hunch up his shoulders, pulling the collar of his coat over a small, wet opening in his neck. The woman made another note in her book.

Blips. Bits and pieces after that. He saw the man walking down a long hallway lined with cages, all of them empty and silent. His nice shoes splashed in green, grungy water, getting more soaked and ruined than they already were. One was even beginning to split at the toe, showing a flat, clawed foot. That pained, sad smile stayed on his face, as if he were a machine.

Then, like a mote of smoke, the memory faded and vanished. Gil was back in the ocean, back in reality, back in his heavy, stiff, hungry body. Blue calmness was all around him, and he realized he was very far from his territory, in a huge expanse of open, warmer water. Putting out his fins, he glanced around, gaping his gills in panic. Where was he? He was floating, without a floor or walls of stone to make him feel protected and invisible. Out in open water, he was a huge, pink sore thumb.

Turning in circles, Gil looked desperately for something familiar, something to head for. Nothing but thick, blue fog for as far as he could see. Daylight stabbed through the murky water, making his skin tingle. He had been drifting for hours. He was far from home. There were no walruses here.

His gills pumped. His fins flicked randomly, keeping his bulk from sinking. Blinking, Gil twisted and swam upward, surging toward the surface and breaking it with a leap.

Spray hissing from his nostrils, Gil's head appeared in the vast plain of heaving waves, and immediately the sun stung his eyes before thin membranes slid over them. He looked around, and saw nothing but ocean.

He swallowed, his weak mind registering fear and discomfort. Ears flicked back, he whimpered like a struck dog. Things were strange and crumbly in his simple, linear thoughts, his brain unable to register anything except the facts: he was looking out at an empty sea and sky, the sun was setting, but was still unpleasantly warm, and sea birds were beginning to glide down to land on the top of his head. He shook, but the gulls only came back, prodding him with their sharp beaks and pulling at clumps of hardened salt stuck to his skin.

_Where am I?_

The singular thought drifted by like a piece of paper caught in the current. All that he cared about was the growing pain in his stomach and the aching stitch creeping up his side from treading water for so long. Letting the air run out of his lungs, Gil pulled back underwater, forcing the screaming birds off of his head.

_Now what?_

Keep drifting, his instincts told him. Go south, there are fish there. Warm weather, deep waters. Hiding places. He agreed sleepily, threatening to go under again. If he fell asleep on the drift again, he wouldn't wake back up; starvation was clawing its way into him, shaving off the last foot of blubber between his innards and the cold outside. Getting on the move would warm him up.

Flicking his tail, Gil started south with purpose. He kept his mind on images of sun, sand and fish, breathing steadily and keeping careful time with swishes of his limbs. Determined, he focused on the feeling of the water growing warmer as the day's warmth settled in after dusk. The water grew darker and darker as night set in, and after sundown, Gil started regaining his strength. A small smile grew on his fleshy mouth as he sucked down a wayward pack of krill, the first food he'd had in almost two weeks. Energy filled him in the growing dark as more krill and even small fish began to appear.

What a thing! This new place was full of food! Stopping, Gil glanced around to see hundreds of shimmering bodies fleeing his sharp teeth, catching the moonlight like coins. A surge of speed let him swallow a whole school of bait fish, filling his aching stomach. Green kelp grew in glowing groves below, and the calls of seals could be heard from somewhere far away.

For a few hours in this place, Gil forgot his problems. The last few scraps of his humanity were gone for that time, letting him be free. If he had stayed like this, in a rich reef growing on the corpse of a sunken ship, he would have died happy. The flashbacks would have gone away, and everything would have been fine.

The taste of blood hit his tongue.

Intrigued, Gil sucked in more reddish water, tasting fish and viscera floating free in the water. A chunk of tuna floated by his nose, but he didn't register anything strange. He swallowed it, not thinking anything of it. Another bit went by, and the water begun to cloud up with red mist. Slowly, GIl began to realize that something was off.

And he realized it far too late.

Following the trail of dead fish, Gil brushed against something suspended in the water. He didn't notice it until he ran into another invisible barrier, which he stared at in bewilderment. He couldn't really see what was in front of him; it was dark and his vision was poor to begin with. Twisting like an eel, he looked for a way around from the barrier that was biting into his skin and surrounding him.

_Net! NET NET NET, YOU FOOL!_

Before he could do anything about it, Gil found that he could no longer move.

Like a deadly, smothering nightmare, he was suddenly surrounded by squeezing, pulling, biting ropes. His many limbs were forced to his sides, and panic set in as the binds grew tighter and tighter.

_NET! NET! REMEMBER TO BREATHE! Look up, look up!_

Lashing violently, he tore at the net with all of his strength, but it was futile. The bloody water became a boiling froth as the horizon tilted and twisted as he tried to escape. A scream of terror ripped through the quiet ocean.

He was going to die.

###

**I'm not dead, although I'm highly doubtful that any of you actually thought I was. This is definitely not my best work; a lot of it was rather rushed and written out while I was blocked on other things, though I've written a second chapter that I'll post in a day or two that I think is quite a bit better. The Average People isn't deadfic yet, but I probably won't start up on it again until summer, or at least after exams in a few weeks. **

**I know I'm not the only one who's wondered what would happen to Gil if he really fled out into the open ocean when Delta spared him. Since we don't really have a canon description of him, I had to kind by one blurry concept piece and a lot of fanon guessing. (Why does everyone think he has six arms?) I'll update this. Probably. I miss my screaming hoards of adoring fans. You guys are like diamond tools in Minecraft: sturdy, loyal, shiny and awesome. And teal. **

**Cheers,**

**Skull**


	2. Chesapeake Bay, November 1971

Over the weekend of November fifth, 1971, the weather had been very pleasant. The sun was out for most of the day, and the hurricane season was far off. The sea was peaceful and tranquil, easy for sailing and doing science.

On board the S.S. _Bluefin_, twenty grad students from the University of Maryland had been on an expedition to study sharks in the waters of the coastal Atlantic. They were good kids, smart kids, normal kids. They stood on the edges of the boat, looking out on the water.

The _Bluefin _charged out into the cold water, bouncing over the foamy ridges of the waves and whirring deeply down below. The jibs and sail arms snapped in the salty wind. They were heading for a ring of nets that their fisherman escorts had thrown out a few hours before after chumming the water to draw in the sharks. Orange buoys bobbed in the waves below, marking the edges of the nets.

It was always fun to get in with the sharks. The students leaned over the sides of the boat, shouting to one another and pointing at a dark fin breaking the surface. Several sharks were coming in from the south, and something was lashing around inside the corral out on the water. Foam flew up into the grayish sky as black specks.

The ship pulled into a spot next to the edge of the net, and put down anchor. With a huge clang, the rusty "T" shape came free and splashed into the water, throwing more spray up into the wind. Lurching, the _Bluefin _stopped, and crewmen began to haul in the nets. The students chattered amongst themselves while their professor looked out onto the water with concern. Something was amiss.

This fellow was old. He had been on more voyages in this water than probably the captain himself. His eyes were watching a spot on the net where gulls were beginning to gather in huge numbers, swooping and screaming in a fluttering white ball. At first, he was sure that something large was caught in the net, perhaps a right whale or a school of jellyfish, and was in danger. Nets were dangerous. He'd had friends who had died trying to pull things out of nets. But now... out on the water, an unnatural disturbance was happening. A white fin broke the water, along with a distant, haunting call.

"Doctor Riley?"

Whispering nervously, the bosun tapped him on the shoulder, making him jump. Dr. Riley turned, regarding the man with a raised eyebrow.

"What do you think's going on out there?" Riley asked. The bosun shrugged, looking through a pair of binoculars to the chaos. He frowned.

"Looks like you caught more than a shark, doc," he said.

As they spoke, the other sailors started hauling in the nets. Buoys were heaved up onto the decks, dumping thick, chummy water onto the deck, which the students jumped back from. Riley watched with nervous anticipation as the pulsing ball in their net was dragged closer and closer to the boat, which was beginning to lean to one side. One of the men shouted for the other hands to come on deck and ready some poles and diving knives. Some were already sawing through ropes, trying to cut the net free of the wenches. Seasoned sailors with frightened, pale looks on their faces is never, ever a good sign. A couple fellows were eyeing the lifeboats and the gaffs bolted to the side of the cabin, murmuring something about Iceland and ghosts.

"What are they saying?" Riley asked. Looking over, he saw the bosun had gone very wan, his face tight and nervous. Riley shook his shoulder.

"Oh... yeah," the bosun squeaked. "They're just being stupid kids."

A sound. A terrible, terrible sound. For the rest of his life, Dr. Riley would remember the cry that rose up out of that net as the _Bluefin _was nearly sunk.

Riley, the bosun, and half of the students and crew were suddenly soaked as a massive whip of water lashed the deck, and one man was left lying prone, unconscious. A long, perilous groan of strained metal bent the air, making Riley cover his ears. The groaning grew and grew as the _Bluefin _slowly listed to one side again, so slowly that time seemed to stop. People screamed. Another few tripped and fell as the _Bluefin _continued to tilt toward the boiling, churning side of the net.

Eyes. Riley's stomach dropped and his mind went totally blank for the split second the ship was almost parallel to the water. Two bright, intelligent white eyes looked up at him with almost human fury as another ferocious scream ripped out of a gaping red maw lined with banana-sized, serrated teeth.

###

All Gil knew was that he had to get away.

As the net was slowly being pulled in, Gil was already beginning to tire. His body ached with the effort of thrashing and pulling at the ropes, and lack of air was sucking the strength from his muscles. Now he was basically floating, his back out of the water, giving a halfhearted pull every few seconds. His thin skin was burned and cut from friction. Despair was setting in. The ropes grew tighter as he was slowly dragged away, his long body limp in the grip of the net.

Birds bit him. Sea air whipped his back sail. Something was already gnawing on the tip of his tail. To see his massive hulk snared in that net, bloodied and struggling, must have been absolutely pathetic. The targeted sharks, who were wise enough in the ways of the sea to stay away from the net's walls, would have laughed at him if they could.

_I'm dead. Dead. Dead. _

Thinking about death made him feel different. For a few moments, Gil was himself again, the man from an aristocratic family who was too smart for his own good but too insipidly _stupid _to ask questions, ever. Then it was gone, like a flash of lightning. He was back in the water, struggling to keep air in his lungs or water in his gills, then it was back, surrounding him like a dream. Back and forth, from the freezing ocean, to the warmth of his childhood home, to the opulence of the welcome ball in Rapture, to the cramped horror of his tank sealed away in the basement of Fontaine Futuristics... his life flashed before his eyes like a violent, nonsensical film.

Memories blended together gruesomely, putting him as a terrified child under the fist of a raging Big Daddy, and an unspeakable beast before the disapproving eyes of his commanding mother and frail father. They stared at him with cold, expressionless faces from behind thick, filthy glass.

Suddenly, he stopped. Something massive and heavy collided with his side, shocking him back into the bizarre world of reality. This huge thing was pushing against him, threatening him, prodding him with sharp things and trying to strangle him with more nets and ropes.

No more.

A hot ball of rage exploded in his chest, blinding, uncontrollable rage that took him over and shook him like a doll.

Screaming like something from a deep, dark pit, Gil threw himself with all of his incredible strength at the thing persistently pushing him. His head pulled out of the water with a huge wake of boiling foam, and his forelimbs gripped the sides of the thing, yanking it into the water. The thing listed, groaning, resisting his efforts and delivering punishing blows with heavy flails and sharp points. A gash opened up on his cheek, but he didn't care. He was going to die fighting this thing that had captured him.

There were screams, yells. Human sounds.

Gil recoiled, pulling away from the frightened, tiny faces of all these people. It was a ship. Blind fury dissolved into a need to get away. Human fishermen had him at their mercy. Logic collided with survival instinct, his tired, oxygen-starved brain struggling to process why they were acting so afraid.

_KILL THEM!_

_ RUN AWAY! _

_ BREATHE!_

The last command registered too late. Stress and terror overloaded his system, and shock set in like a paralyzing poison. His claws dug into the wood of the deck, snapping lines and crashing into cages, throwing things, hurting people. A gaff sought his ribs, and another net gummed up his mouth.

At least he wasn't alone anymore.

###

Doctor Riley didn't want to be famous. He didn't want to find the thing that he found on a Thursday morning on board the rickety old _Bluefin _during a totally normal, routine shark tagging. He didn't want to be at the New York Aquarium, being interrogated by the FBI and the National Fish and Wildlife Service in a dark back room, surrounded by looming, humming machines that pumped millions of gallons of water at bullet speeds-and what if they burst or something went wrong and those _eyes_!

"Dr. Riley!"

An agent smacked his hands down on the plastic picnic table, bringing Riley back to reality. He jumped, the sharp, piercing eye of the stubby bureaucrat in a sharp uniform. His Fish and Wildlife badge was brightly polished, worn with great pride. His ranger's hat was too big for him.

"Y-yes," Riley answered dumbly. "I was the chaperone of the trip."

The agent gave him a skeptical look, as if he thought Riley was lying. "Okay, doctor. So you went on this little expedition why?"

Riley's mouth went dry. The agent was missing teeth, and he had a scar on his neck. He wondered how on Earth _that _happened.

"My students were learning about ocean ecology. We were going out to tag sharks with radio chirps."

"Chirps?"

"Little electric tags," Riley stammered. "You should know that."

A spark of anger lit in the agent's eyes, and he curled his lip. Strike one, Riley thought. Three strikes and they'll find a reason to send me to federal prison. All I did was my job. I didn't mean to catch a sea monster.

What if this thing was some sort of government experiment? The logical man in him said that was ridiculous, but the nervous, I-really-don't-want-to-go-to-prison man in him said that all the movies he had ever seen were true. He was afraid, and those _eyes_. The eyes of the creature, so gray and deep and cold, were still staring at him in his mind. He shook, not listening to the agent's questions.

"At what time did the... er... subject come into view?"

Blinking stupidly, Riley tried to understand the question. "Uhh... about eleven o' clock."

"And what did you see?"

"Just... birds, I think. Birds, and some foam, I think."

Snorting, the agent glared at him, looking furious at the vagueness of his answer. What else did they want? It wasn't like it really mattered when or how they saw the thing...

The thing that was on the property, floating, barely alive, in the rehab tank behind the scenes at the aquarium. Riley pushed the image from his mind.

For twenty more minutes, the agent and a burly comrade of his interrogated Riley to the point of hysteria. They pressured him, trying to convince him that somehow it was his fault that he had captured the thing and that somehow he had broken some obscure law against capturing endangered species with a gill net. Eventually, they let him go, grumbling and berating each other for not getting more information. Riley closed the door behind him firmly, wanting to leave the whole thing behind.

But he couldn't.

Finding himself in a quiet, deserted back hallway, Riley was presented with a choice. At the end of the hall, there was the door leading to the main building of the aquarium and the exit. He had the choice to walk out, get in his car, and be home in time for the morning news. The other door he had was the one to his immediate right. It led down another series of winding hallways, past laboratories, kitchens, meeting rooms, and eventually, the rehab building. Three massive tanks were in that building, meeting with snaking pipes and complicated devices, dedicated to helping ailing dolphins, orcas and beluga whales. Now, it was housing something less mundane.

He stopped. If he turned right and went out to that building, his life would never be the same, and he was afraid. He was afraid of loosing morning news every day, and cereal at the same time. He didn't want to be famous and change that routine. All of this was so strange and terrifying.

Maybe just a peek. A peek, just to make sure that thing wasn't the thing he had seen during the near sinking of his ship. He had to make sure that creature didn't really have those sharp, icy, _human _eyes.

Drawing in a long, shaky breath, Riley turned and opened the door on his right hand.

Each step seemed longer than the last as he made his way out to the rehab center. The hallway stretched and stretched like something in a dream, and it felt like being hit with a rubber band when he finally got outside. The sun was shining on the flat brown lot, squatty, undecorated buildings, and dozens of Fish and Wildlife trucks in blinding piebald or matte camouflage. Riley walked through a crowd of glaring officers talking in hushed tones on his way to building 42, and tried his best to ignore them. He kept his eyes on the metal service door that only opened with one of ten keys.

Sliding his key into the lock, Riley flinched at the click it made. It was a long, final sound, and the air that hit his face from inside felt like a blast of freezing, foul-smelling breath. The stench of fish, which was something normally familiar and ignored, seemed suddenly hostile and evil. It was dark and clammy inside the building, like a gullet.

Through the door, he walked down another hallway, this one bustling. Staffers in white lab coats pushed past observing agents in clean suits, who were writing frantically on clipboards full of paperwork. Riley opened a door to his left into a supply closet.

This was it. He could either suit up now or turn around and go home.

He took a lab coat and shouldered it on.

With the purpose of a zombie, Riley went down that hallway, giving nervous "um-hms" and "yeah's" to panicked looking interns and colleagues asking him questions. If one of them had asked him to marry them, he probably would have shoved them off with a "Yeah, okay."

The final door. A heavy, bolted down thing it was, with huge locks and the words "TANK ROOM 1 MARINE LABORATORY" painted on it in black block letters. People darted in and out, carrying lab equipment and whole reams of paper. The door vomited gusts of frigid air that stank of rotten meat with every man in and out. Feeling sick, Riley leaned on the wall behind him, trying to catch glimpses of what was going on in the room beyond.

_Do or die, buddy._

Taking a deep breath, Riley took a long time in waiting for the door to clear, then, he stepped inside.

There was no more waiting after that. Riley expected that he'd have to push through a big crowd, be screened, and be generally held up before he got to see the thing. He wasn't. As soon as he went through the door, he and his worst nightmare were nose to nose.

The rehab room was massive and cold, with a huge skylight filling the gray chamber with sun. Two enormous, circular tanks of water sat at the center, millions of gallons of saltwater pumping through a maze of pipes and filters riveted to the walls. People whispered in here, because every sound was amplified twenty-fold by the flat concrete walls; the roar of water was almost deafening.

In one tank, a group of playful dolphins was recovering from near-drowning in a hurricane. They weren't paying attention to the chaos; a trainer was distracting them from the business and noise with a game of beach ball. Why couldn't he be assigned to _that _tank?

No. His assignment was still. It was in the tank closest to him, dozing fitfully, like a forty-foot long, ten ton kitten.

In the closest tank, the water had already turned murky pink with the thing's shed skin and toxic, evil-smelling secretions. The stench grew more unbearable the longer Riley stood there staring, but he was too frozen to his spot to pull the air filter hanging around his neck to his face. In the middle of the mess, pressed up against the glass, squished like... jelly... was a thing that looked ready to fight Godzilla for the fate of the Earth.

Bloated like a dead body, a white-pink salamander-fish twitched and ran in its sleep. Its long, finned tail lashed slowly back and forth. A network of tubes ran into its mouth, pumping water through its gills while it slept. Weak, but unnaturally mammalian limbs curled under it, sharp claws scratching the bottom and sides of the tank almost audibly, or maybe that was just in Riley's imagination.

Its eyes were closed. Gray shades were covering them, thick veins squiggling across. Bubbles rose from its nostrils. It was totally unconscious.

He couldn't very well leave without knowing if this thing had actually looked at him the way he knew it did, with such rage and fury that he thought could only come from a human being. Riley took a few steps forward, getting closer to the pulsing, throbbing tube of gelatinous flesh and sharp teeth seperated from him by only a few inches of glass. He jumped back when, as his footstep echoed through the air, the creature stirred in its sleep.

But before he could get any closer, he was accosted by a group of his associates. Dr. Mars and Dr. St. James were there, giving him disapproving looks and stacking papers in his arms.

"What are you staring at, Christopher?" Dr. Mars barked at Riley.

Riley blinked at her like a moron, waiting a full three seconds before answering.

"Er..." He said, biting his lip. "Just looking."

Frowning, Dr. St. James turned and looked into the tank. "It's big and it's pink. That's all we're supposed to know at this point. Right now, you need to stop staring and start maintaining the PH in the tank."

Sighing, Riley pulled away and joined the group of his friends. St. James clapped him on the back and started in on a long story about how they had managed to wrestle the thing into that tank. Even unconscious, apparently it could still lash its tail and throw its head back and forth, fighting every touch they tried to make. Riley had been in interrogations at the time, but even from there he could hear people yelling and metal smacking against metal; it must have been very exciting. Exciting. Riley felt sick just thinking about excitement.

He felt better, however, once he got to work. Mars and St. James left him with a list of tasks, the first one out in the fish house with the interns. Breathing a sigh of relief but still feeling apprehensive, Riley left the building and crossed the lot, which was now quiet and under the cover of night. He walked along the concrete alone, casting a long shadow in the rusty yellow spotlights, toward the corrugated steel building squatting on the waterside. The fish house smelled bad, but it was gentle and rosy compared to the smell of that creature.

The night went on and on. In the fish house, Riley chopped up bait fish with the interns, making disjointed, tired conversation and dragging shivering, bloody fingers across charts and graphs and waterlogged books with laminated pages. A bandage wrapped around Riley's arm, wet from barbed suckers of smelly, dead squid, was already coming off and getting in the way. Having to stay awake and focused on the books, trying to negotiate with the new graduates about what giant salmander-fetuses eat. Thoughts of eyes filled him.

Hours passed. Buckets of chopped squid went back and forth from the fish house to the rehab building, and Riley felt like a zombie. He kept his mind on his tasks, ignoring the aches and pains and _eyes _that floated around him like a mist.

By midnight, Riley found himself sitting in a chair, back in the rehab building. Most of the others had gone home by now, but he had automatically agreed to take double shifts. He had to see the eyes. Just once, then he'd never go back to that building or that thing ever again. He had to know that he had only imagined those eyes.

"Are you okay, Chris?" Dr. St. James asked him as he began to slump in his seat. Riley nodded, not looking up.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Just tired."

Riley didn't remember what St. James said next. He was looking past him, at the tank. The creature was stirring now, flipping over and now breathing on its own. Feathery tissue drew in and out of its gills, but its white, rancorous eyes were still closed, still cold.

That thing was laughing at him.

At some point, St. James shrugged his shoulders and walked away, Riley couldn't remember. It was one o' clock now, and he was tired. All the weight of the last few days was pressing on his shoulders, and he was dangerously close to remembering every detail about the _Bluefin_.

His eyes started to drift closed. Tired, exhausted, and fried like a wet toaster, Riley slumped in his seat.

###

Most of Riley's dreams weren't so well-furnished.

Riley very slowly found himself sitting up in a much more comfortable chair. His head spun, and a low, droning buzz filled the air around him, which was hot and humid. Blinking, he looked around, full of confusion and mounting fear.

A warm fire shimmered in a smooth marble hearth, unearthly orange, like a Norman Rockwell painting. Shiny dark hardwood trimmed antique furniture, making him feel like he shouldn't be touching anything. He straightened, rubbing his eyes. Leather bound books in tall bookshelves surrounded him, making the walls of the tiny, intimate chamber. It was a perfect scene, too perfect for a dream.

Richness oozed from the very walls. A rack on the wall behind him was lined with bottles of fine liquor, shining like gems and full to the brim with amber liquid. No one he had ever met could afford that much fancy booze. The rack seemed to stretch all the way across the wall, and every bottle was different. Nice paintings filled niches in-between the bookcases, lighted by their own light bulbs. A bear skin was on the floor, snarling a frighteningly realistic snarl, like something out of a cartoon. A picturesque ship-in-a-bottle sat on the mantle, along with a sextant, a small brass globe, and some other old-fashioned, Vernian knickknacks.

Another chair sat across from his. It was red velvet, with brass fittings and redwood legs. An end table sat nearby, a glass of something dark, rich, reddish brown like the wood of the chair on it, placed delicately on a granite coaster. There was still ice in it.

Glancing around, Riley thought about getting up and exploring. A cherry door with a shiny knob was close, and slightly ajar, showing a glimpse of some dark, threatening hallway. The light of the fire didn't reach there. He put his hands on the arms of the chair, ready to rise and get out of the strange light and stuffy room as soon as possible.

"Sit down, Dr. Riley."

He froze. Letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding, Riley turned his head very slowly, ice forming in his stomach.

There was a man sitting in the other chair, lightly grasping the glass of nice drink (Cognac? Spiced rum? He didn't pretend to know) in his graceful, tapering fingers. One of his thick, black eyebrows went up in a high arch. Riley didn't know how he got into the room, much less without him noticing, but he was there and he already looked comfortable.

"Will you calm down, sir?" The man asked. Riley breathed slowly, not answering, and slowly sat back down.

"Good. No need to be so tense, Doctor," the man said, a smile crawling onto his rounded, soft face. "Get comfortable. Have a drink. Well, I guess that won't help, seeing as none of this is real."

Squinting, Riley tried to make sense of all this. The man was strange looking, not really ugly, but strange looking: he had thin, lank black hair that was slicked back with enough schmaltz to play ice hockey on, and huge, staring black eyes that bulged from his head in an uncomfortable, unnatural way. He wasn't thin, but he wasn't fat; his figure was squatty but slender, like an athletic frog's. His hairline was high, and a scrubby, tiny mustache sat on his lip, mangy and poorly cut. His inventor's hands twitched, one finger tapping on his glass. A puffy scar cracked like a lightning bolt across the underside of his wrist.

"Who are you?" Riley asked, looking the man up and down. That enigmatic smile stayed on the short fellow's face while he settled deeper into his chair and sipped his drink.

"And who are you?" The man parroted. "Who were you to haul me out of the ocean and imprison me?"

Dry, mouthed, Riley stared at the man.

"What?"

The smile disappeared from the man's face. He placed his glass back on the table and leaned forward. His eyes had a strange cast.

"You. I remember you very specifically," he said. "You were on that boat. You stood there like a fool while your friends threw nets on me and stabbed a spear in my side. You were their leader, yes?"

The calmness on the man's face was the most puzzling thing. He looked slightly angry, but his features were still smooth and relaxed, placid, as he told Riley about this. What was going on here?

"You were," the man went on. "You were the last man I saw before I fell unconscious. I saw that you were screaming. How frightened you looked."

This man was insane. Feeling strangely lucid, but knowing that this was a dream, he was filled with the urge to flee. The freezing cold, dark eyes of this man were boring holes in his chest, making him feel very nervous-he wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying.

"And I know that you're not paying attention, Doctor."

And he could read minds.

"And yes, I can read your mind."

Terror suddenly filled Riley, making his stomach take a steep, long drop. The chilly, calculating eyes of this man were analyzing him now, flicking around like a lizard's. That's what he looked like, a lizard. A marine iguana from the Galapagos, rough and scaly, with hateful eyes and baleful posture, puffed up and crusty with sea salt. His fingers were like long, curving claws, clicking against each other.

"What do you want with me?" Riley asked, not sure what else to do. His voice was small and wavering, like a child's.

Frowning bitterly, the man affixed him with a poisonous glare. "How thick are you, man?" He snarled. "Put two and two together."

Now Riley was getting frustrated. In dream logic, this strange, well-dressed man was making absolutely no sense. Standing, Riley made for the door without saying anything.

That eyebrow went up again, and the entire world exploded into panic with a furious roar.

_Thud! _Riley was thrown into a wall, knocking books from their shelves and unhinging the shelf holding the liquor. Glasses fell and shattered into improbable star busts of rainbow-colored glass, spraying bitter-smelling brown brandy onto the red carpet. Riley couldn't breathe, and it felt like a huge weight pressing down on his chest. The man was still sitting in his chair, calmly sipping his drink and smiling again like a madman.

"I make the rules here, Dr. Riley," he said. "Your tiny little human mind is clay in my hands. This dream is my creation, and I came here to give you a message."

Air screaming in his ears, Riley was flung back into his chair by an invisible force. He hit it with a bone-crunching thud, but didn't feel anything except the huge pressure now forcing him to stay still. The man's smile grew.

"Now that you're comfortable, I'll try to explain," he said.

"Right now, you're asleep in a chair a few meters from me. I am using my telepathic abilities to pry into your subconscious. I created this dream so I could communicate to you how I feel about being trapped here in a tank after YOU captured me. Now, at this point, I could easily snap your mind like a twig if I wanted to, but I won't expend the effort because I need you. You, Doctor, need to be alive and sane for my purposes."

Gasping for breath, Riley tried to understand what was going on. His mind was getting fuzzy, and his thoughts escaped from him like fleeing pigeons from a roost. As if he didn't notice, the man went on.

"I need you to negotiate my release. Do this, and we won't have any more problems with one another. If you resist... well," here he smirked villainously, "I'll have to resort of other measures of persuasion."

The pressure lifted off of Riley, making him take a huge gasp of air. He hyperventilated, feeling like someone had just tried to drown him. Now the man was standing; he seemed much taller, much stronger. He reached out with one of his devious hands.

"I'd like to be friends one day, Riley," he said, smiling honestly now, "but the more unpleasant parts of my personality wouldn't have it."

Riley shook his head. "I still don't understand."

Sighing, the man pulled back his hand and looked at him with exasperation. Then, his dark, shiny eyes lit up with an idea.

"I know. I'll show you."

Then, with horrible finality and gut-wrenching suddenness, everything vanished. Riley was floating in a black void, suspended in total silence and absolute darkness. Flits and shreds of the beautiful room drifted around him like burning moths, as if the study had been made of paper. For what seemed like forever, he sat there, in limbo, afraid that he was dead.

A sound. It was a deep, gurgling lurch. After that, lights popped up in the blackness, little motes that floated like fish. A cluster of white bubbles rose up from the unfathomable pit below him, as if he was underwater. He _was_; as he moved his arms, they felt bogged down, as if by thick, airless deep water. He could feel the pressure pushing down on him, but it didn't hurt. He didn't have to breathe here.

A shadow stirred somewhere out in the unknown distance. It was like something burned onto his corneas, faint and unreal, hardly distinguishable from the darkness. It was long and sinuous, and it circled him slowly. He began to panic as he felt more and more trapped.

_The eyes!_

For a split second, a horrible flash of light filled the void. He saw the eyes that had locked onto him, those brilliant gray pebbles from deep, deep in the ocean that were so full of intelligence they could only belong to a human mind. Those eyes were once the eyes of a man.

The light grew, and he was floating free in the deep ocean with the _thing_. Its teeth glinted like blades, and there was a look of absolute hatred in its hideous face that seemed completely unreal, even more unreal than the thing itself.

_I'm glad we could come to an understanding, Dr. Riley._

###

Gasping, drenched in sweat and trembling violently, Riley woke up and fell out of his chair. He hit the cement floor hard, bruising his shoulder. Lying there, he cursed sharply and curled into a ball. He clutched his injured shoulder, whimpering.

"Oh my God, Chris! Are you okay?"

Dr. Mars was there, grabbing his arm and helping him up. She gave him a confused look as he sat up, biting her lip.

"What were you doing sleeping here?" She asked. "Did you sleep here all night?"

Riley looked at her dumbly, nodding slowly. "I guess I did."

She shook her head, reaching her hand to grab his. Standing, Riley rubbed his shoulder and winced in pain. He smiled awkwardly at Dr. Mars, but she wasn't looking at him. She was turned around, towards the tank, where many others were standing, murmuring excitedly and taking notes. Some had cameras, and were snapping pictures with flashless lenses. The dirty, reddish water was churning.

It was the thing. It was awake and moving, swimming in slow, purposeless circles around the glass walls. It's long tail flicked lazily, and its forelegs dragged the bottom, weak. A young woman in a wet suit was perched on the side of the tank, tossing in fish, but they were ignored. The thing seemed to be dazed, trying to orient itself.

"Isn't it amazing?" Dr. Mars asked. Riley nodded stupidly. A cold feeling was gripping his insides, colder than the air keeping the room at a fish-friendly 50 degrees.

"Yeah, I guess."

Mars turned, looking at him skeptically. "How can you not be totally blown back by this, Chris? This is the _missing link_! This animal is a living fossil! It's incredible!"

"It creeps me out," Riley said, trying to sound like he was joking. Mars frowned at him.

"Just get up. I promise he won't hurt you," she said, and she advanced into the crowd. Riley followed her, staring up at the edge of the tank as it grew larger and larger in front of him. He was almost okay with it, until the creature pulled past the glass.

"He's wonderful, isn't he?" Mars said. Her voice sounded distant. "We're thinking about a name right now. I'd think you'd want to be a part of that, you being one of the discoverers... Dr. Boston thinks it's of _Andias_... I think it's too primitive... _Andias Priscus _has a ring to it..."

Eventually, Riley couldn't hear her anymore. He could only stand and stare. The creature had stopped, and was staring at the many people standing around its domain. At first, its face was curious and unintelligent in a sea lion kind of way, but then it turned, and saw Riley.

As the assembled scientists nodded, shook hands and talked feverishly, those chilly reptile eyes locked onto his. They blinked, and a spark of knowing lit up behind them.

The corners of the creature's mouth curved upward. The others didn't seem to see it, but Riley did. For a split second, that unholy monster was smiling at him, taunting him.

As soon as it came, though, it was gone. With a flick of its tail, the creature sped off to the other side of the tank towards the fish that had been tossed to it eariler. The poor things fled, but they were too slow and were devoured without mercy.


	3. New York Aquarium, January 1972

_ Trematolestes Superstes_.

That was the name that was on the front of his glass prison. His name. Gil Alexander no longer existed; now there was only _Trematolestes Superstes_, or "the survivor of giant salamanders."

He was an animal to them. An unintelligent beast. Even though he had come very close to being just that not long ago, it was still insulting. No. He was _humiliated_ and ashamed to be stared at all day by all of these skittering flour beetles in their white lab coats, locked up in a tank and totally unable to do anything about it.

'_You can do something about it.' _Something in him whispered. '_Break the doctor. Bend him to your will. You're in total control.'_

He wasn't in control. Control was something Gil was used to, something he liked, and it was all gone. No matter what he told himself, right now he was in no position to make any deals with any doctors. He knew that. He just didn't want to think about it.

Besides, he had other things to think about, like staying sane.

###

Weeks and weeks went by. Weeks and weeks of nothing. Gil would rather be back in Rapture.

According to the thoughts of the men around him, it was now January of 1972. January 19th, specifically. Gil didn't care, but it disturbed him to know how quickly time was passing; it felt like only days had passed since he had been captured. Maybe it was because he spent so much time sleeping, lying still on the bottom of the tank and watching-waiting.

Even though his vision was poor, Gil could still observe the comings and goings of the laboratory. Every day, little dioramas of human drama went by in front of him, as if he were invisible. As he grew stronger and stronger, his telepathy grew and reached its tendrils into the minds of the scuttling insects that wore their lab coats like military uniforms and thought their problems were so important. It was so funny how they didn't know that he could see every horrible, hideous, private thought they had. It was like a tiny bit of revenge.

There was this one woman. He loved her so: her avaricious thoughts were hilarious. On this morning, she was perched on the side of his tank, tossing fish to him. He watched her from below, circling slowly, trying to pry into her mind. She was totally unaware.

'_Once I get this done,' _she thought. '_Maybe I can catch Gerome on his way to the manatees... Julie won't be with him... I hope that canister of potassium carbide won't be missed.'_

Gil wasn't sure what she was planning, but he could entertain himself imagining. He didn't notice that her mouth was running away from her wicked thoughts.

"Come on, Magnus," she said. "Just once. I know you're smart enough."

Magnus. That was what they called him, as _Trematolestes Superstes _was quite a mouthful. It was an Icelandic name, Magnus. Latin for "great." He supposed it fit well enough, but it made him feel like a pet.

He didn't listen to her. Gil remained on the floor of the tank, his tail curled around him, snapping up the fish that floated down to him. They were trying to train him to jump for his food; the dolphins next door told him that it amused the humans to no end. Her frustration at his disobedience amused _him_.

"It's not hard!" She yelled, as if she thought he couldn't hear her. (That was what she was thinking, in fact.) "Fish! Don't you want a fish, Magnus?"

Sighing an underwater sigh, Gil pushed off the bottom with his tail. He cruised up, and broke the water dramatically, spraying water into the still lab air. The woman, Miranda Gould, giggled inanely at his antics like a moronic child. He rolled his eyes, but his lack of pupils kept her from noticing.

"Now catch it this time," she said, still snickering obnoxiously. Gil felt tempted to breach up and devour her.

She tossed a fish to him, and he allowed it to bounce off his head and slide into the water. He smiled at her look of confusion, ignoring the pang of hunger he felt as the mackerel floated down to the bottom.

'_What's up with that? Stupid thing.' _She thought. Gil curled his lip. He wished that he was strong enough to implant suggestions into people's heads while they were conscious, so he could tell her to go jump in the bay. Running his tongue across his huge teeth, he thought again about snatching her from her little platform and ending this torture. How fun it would be, to see and feel the panic in her tiny mammal brain and the mammal brains of all the others watching and gibbering around him.

A look of discomfort crossed the woman's face. Gil smiled, knowing that his angry thoughts were reaching her, slithering in the corners of her mind.

'_God, that thing is ugly_.' Her inner voice hissed. Snarling, Gil did something bold.

He turned his huge body, throwing up a huge wall of water against the pedestal. The woman gasped, grabbing the side with white knuckles. Her terror was like a drug. Laughing a wet, gurgling laugh, Gil whipped his tail around and splashed her with a tidal wave of the filthy, toxic swill they made him live in. She screamed, hitting the platform with a slap. That looked like it hurt.

She stayed there for a long time, shaking and thinking jumbled, survival-focused thoughts. How pathetic. Just for the fun of it, Gil smacked the side of the tank with his tail, jarring the platform and ripping another scream from the girl. He laughed again, hiccuping bubbles out of his gills. The bucket of fish had fallen into the water; he grabbed it and sucked out the chum like cream out of a doughnut. Two birds, one stone.

Now people were clambering up to the platform, grabbing the girl and trying to bring her back to her senses. Gil could see their shadows from underwater, and considered rocking the platform again. He didn't; from down below, he observed them helping her down, their thoughts muddied together by their closeness and common goal.

Batting the bucket between his forelegs, Gil watched the scientists as they gathered around his tank, wondering what had happened. They had thoughts: _What happened? That's what you get when you break protocol. _

Some were less concerned. Gil heard a few ugly titters about stupid women and how she must have provoked "the creature" with her games, thinking this "thing" could possibly be as smart as a walrus or a dolphin. These people just _hated _each other. That was the difference between them and the Family.

As the girl was carted away from the laboratory, some stayed behind to observe him, trying to understand what had caused him to lash out. (They were so _stupid_. They couldn't see the glimmer of rage and intelligence behind his blind eyes that he tried so hard to focus on them, to make them _feel_.) They stared at him, thinking idle thoughts. One observed a long, white scar across his broad side, the scar left by a spear thrown at him by one of the crewmen of the _Bluefin_.

Turning, Gil looked at the scar himself. It was puffy, and it hadn't healed properly. It hurt under the skin, reminding him of how cruel people could be. Angry, murderous thoughts filled him as those wide, glassy eyes stared at him through the glass. He felt like a freak on display. He turned his back to them, curling into a ball, hugging his tail like a teddy bear. Hate settled in his chest.

Eventually, he felt them grow bored and leave, dismissing the incident as an accident on the part of a big, stupid animal that didn't know its own strength. His hate made him feel like doing something he'd regret.

Instead, he turned it inward. Pulling himself into a tighter little ball, he closed his eyes and shut his ears. But he couldn't block out the thoughts of his captors, nor the sound of water pushing in and out of his gills. In, out. In, out. Madness clawed at the ragged edges of his mind, and the struggle made him tired.

Eventually, everything went very quiet. Apparently that was his last feeding of the day; he had quite a few, being hungry every hour or there about, so it was hard to make a schedule. It was still lit up in the lab, but everything was silent, without even thoughts to fill the void. Everyone had gone home.

Releasing his tail, Gil stretched and swam to the surface. He broke into the air, and looked around. No one. Looking up, he saw the night sky in the glass ceiling. He was alone for the night, with another hour or so before a night worker came in to check on him. Even the dolphins didn't want to talk; they swam in aimless circles, half asleep and half awake.

He hated days like this. He couldn't do anything without his past gnawing at his fins.

Gil had tried to put it all behind him, if only to keep from going insane. He distanced himself from the warm-faced, kind man with the scrubby mustache and the insatiable need to do good by others. Gil had only wanted to to the right thing, but he had been a fool. A great fool. A human fool.

Pinching his eyes tighter shut, Gil fought exhaustion. He hadn't slept in at least two days, trying to avoid the nightmares that haunted him. Boredom and anger stirred bad thoughts. He was forced to remember.

###

_Rapture had fallen. _

_ To see Sofia Lamb so proud of her dead, rotting kingdom was strange and frightening. She lorded over Splicers like a loving mother with a well-intentioned love for the belt. She loved everyone, but she never really seemed to show it. For all the times she had told him about her great and unending compassion, it became more and more apparent that she had lost that love for him. _

_ He was a failure. A failed experiment, a source of shame. _

_ For the fifth time that day, Lamb sat him down at the battered wooden table in her office, shuffling a stack of flash cards in her swift, graceful hands. Her eyes were down, not looking at him, so her glasses became opaque in the light of her desk lamp. A small frown curled her serene face, making it ugly and strange to him. _

_ Gil himself was sitting across from her, suffering quietly in his seat. _

_ He knew he should be in bed, but Lamb never failed to test him daily, and test him vigorously. She seemed to care that he had a fever of 102 degrees, but it didn't deter her from the routine. She had to prove herself right. There was no way that Sofia Lamb could be wrong about something. There was no way her experiment had failed. Gil knew that her own sanity depended on it. And what was really pathetic was that Gil believed that it was going to work. One more test. One more chance to prove himself, and all of this would go away. His own sanity was quickly eroding. _

_ Sweat trickled down his face as he concentrated on the problem set before him. It was a simple logarithm, one of the practice questions that started the test, but it was giving him a terrible headache. The numbers floated out of his mind, and were crowded out by distracted, maddened thoughts: the pain in his lower back, the sickening color of the carpet, the smell of death in the room, and the imagined chanting of demonic rites that pressed in on his ears. The sound of his own heart was fast and deafening. _

_ "Answer the problem, Doctor," Lamb said calmly, like a machine. Gil looked up at her, his glassy eyes wide. _

_ "I... I d-don't know, D-D-Dr. Lamb. I d-don't know," he replied. He felt one of his violent bouts of hiccups coming on; all he seemed to do these days was hiccup. For at least two hours a day, he jumped in his seat with little spasms, making his sides ache and his throat burn. When it was really bad, it felt like he couldn't breathe. _

_ "One miss, then," Lamb said. She put the card back and pulled another. _

_ "Suppose two parents choose to separate a pair of twins raised together since birth..." She began, but Gil wouldn't stand it anymore. His skin was burning. It felt like he was going to drown in the bile building in his chest. _

_ "No more!" _

_ A sound that was horrifyingly alien ripped out of his throat, and he slammed his hands down on the tabletop. Clumsily, he swiped the cards away, sending them fluttering all around the room like Sofia's beloved, wretched butterflies. _

_ "N-n-no more, Sofia! P-please! I'm in terrible p-pain! I've st-t-topped caring!" He screamed. His hiccups were growing violent, shaking him like tiny seizures. If it would only stop, if he could do something different to prove that nothing had gone wrong, even though he knew that it had. Anything to stop the questions. _

_ For a few seconds, Lamb seemed to feel sorry for him. She shook her head knowingly, and gestured for him to sit. When he did, she gently patted him on the shoulder. Her touch instantly calmed his fury. The kindness in her soft blue eyes made it feel like everything was going to be alright. _

_ "Then we'll stop for a while, Dr. Alexander. Breathe slowly. Where is your pain?"_

_ Blinking made his eyes burn. Where _didn't _he hurt? Every inch of him cried out whenever he moved, but it focused intensely on his neck and back. The light of the one lamp __seemed blinding, and it was even beginning to redden his pale skin. He felt very weak and tired, as if something was slowly sapping the very life from his body._

_ "I'm not in pain," he lied. "Not any longer. I... reg-gret what I said. I was being selfish."_

_ Sofia smiled approvingly, the way you might smile at a dog. Somewhere, Gil felt like everything would be okay because she smiled at him like that. There was so much warmness in her eyes at that moment, he didn't notice when it vanished completely a few seconds later. He was so tired, he didn't see her eyes drifting over his shoulder, at the popped collar of his shirt._

_ "Do you have something to hide, Doctor?" She asked. Gil tilted his head, frowning._

_ "What do you mean?" _

_ "Your collar."_

_ Hiccuping again, Gil touched his neck involuntarily. He swallowed when his fingers brushed against something horribly unpleasant. It took everything in him not to pass out right then, but somehow he managed to put on a smile. If he ignored it, it would go away._

_ "I..." he stuttered. "I'm just a bit sick. I should-d g-get some rest."_

_ The look on Sofia's face didn't change. She folded her hands in front of her. _

_ "Indeed."_

_ Stumbling, Gil rose from his seat, nodded to the good doctor, and made his way out of the office. He took his cane, which was leaning on the far wall, and placed his hat on his balding head. Every step hurt, and he was already feeling winded, but he kept that silicone smile on his uneven face. He was just being silly. _

_ "G-Goodbye, D-D-Dr. Lamb," he said. Sofia didn't reply; she was too busy writing notes in a small book she kept on her person. Her face was blank as Gil turned around to see her. _

_ Outside, through the worm eaten door and warmth from a space heater, Gil stumbled through the church of Simon Wales. It was empty now, ceremonial candles extinguished, pews empty, podium quiet. The sound of his cane on the cold metal floor echoed down the winding hallways and honeycombs of lower Rapture. Deathly quiet made his ears ring, and amplified the whispers inside his head; whispers, whispers. Normally he had too much else on his tired mind, but they grew louder, more persistent, every day. _

_ Primordial things. Hungry things. Things that urged him to take to the sea and bay to the hidden moon at night. He had dreams where he was floating in a black, watery abyss, but breathing, and moving with inhuman speed, seeing without his eyes. These sort of dreams were quickly crowding out his more human nightmares, where his sleep was haunted by the broken, distorted memories of all the people sealed in every ADAM cell in his battered body. _

_ Humanity was growing dim. It fell away in chunks with every hiccup. _

_ Feeling his way along with his cane, Gil clambered out to the jagged, meandering streets of Siren Alley. Splicers here were all loyal to the Family, so none would molest him on his walk back to the train. He saw a few as he crossed the narrow street, laying about in the shadows of doorsteps. They looked up at him with supplanting eyes, their weak bodies slumped against walls, their trembling hands clutching at threadbare blankets. A woman held a quietly whimpering child, and both had horrible, hacking coughs. A man nursed a wound on a friend's side, gibbering shaky prayers as he layered dirty gauze onto his wound. Gil wanted to help, but he didn't really know how; his hands didn't work right anymore, and... he just couldn't. These people just terrified him far too much. _

_ He moved on, and he heard a weak cry from somewhere in the darkness. _

###

'_Ow. Ow, that burns, I think. OW! Burning! I think I left the kettle on!'_

Gasping in water, Gil woke up with a jump. Instinct flung him to the corner of his tank, away from the searing puddle of sunlight pooling at the bottom of his prison. He hissed at it, nuzzling the burn on his tail with his forehead. As the rush of adrenaline faded from his overworked system, he realized that he was back in his heavy, hideous body, back in his tank of dirty water, back in the prison that he was locked in without judge, jury, trial or sparkling hope of execution. Breathing slowly to keep from crying out in fury, Gil let go of his tail and settled back onto the bottom.

'_Another wonderful day at the aquarium. Oh joy. What a lovely morning it is outside. I wish I could go out there, but I suppose _wishing _never did me any good.'_

Gil found that he was doing more and more thinking. Introspection was normally frightening, but he didn't have anything better to do. Well, most of the time. Today, he was feeling unusually refreshed. Angry. Dr. Riley hadn't returned, yet again, and no one else had happened to fall asleep in his immediate vicinity since then, so he wasn't able to exert any control over their minds... yet. His grand plan was falling apart around his stupid, funny-shaped ears. At least they were feeding him, and his bones were beginning to vanish under a new layer of blubber, giving him enough energy to expand his psychic arm further out through the facility. Maybe he wouldn't need Riley; stronger, waking minds could fall under his spell soon enough.

A fish splashed into the tank. Gil looked up drowsily as it floated by his nose, staining the water with its fatty blood. He sucked it down, swallowing it whole. Another few came down, a whole bucket full. They didn't try to make him do tricks anymore; their fear was hilarious. He could feel it in his bones, the crackling of their terror when he looked them in the eyes, and it almost make it worth it to be there. The looks they gave him, their ape faces contorted with fright when he bared his razor-sharp teeth or pressed his face up against the glass, watching them. Fascination turned to wariness very fast in these humans. He could hear it in their thoughts as he grew more and more powerful:

'_It's _watching _me again!'_

_ 'Don't give me the tank shift, DON'T GIVE ME THE TANK SHIFT, PLEASE!'_

_ 'Maybe they'll give Jhoanneson the tank shift today. I hope they do. He took my parking space this morning.' _

Things like that made him smile.

Today, Gil thought then, I'm going to try something. I'm going to try something devious.

Swimming across the tank, (carefully avoiding the pool of light) Gil pressed up to the glass facing the lab equipment. A few early risers were there, talking anxiously and sipping their coffee like lemmings. They cast nervous looks at him, and one by one, they wandered off down the various corridors stemming off from the lab. Good. He needed all the excess static gone to test his abilities.

After a minute, the lab was quiet of thoughts. Gil took a deep breath of water, and pushed his head to the surface. Steam puffed out of his nostrils, and he was calm. Closing his eyes, he focused on the television sitting on the table across the room.

_Focus._

_ Focus._

_ Focus._

_ Focus._

His brows tightened, and every ounce of his power shot to that tiny screen. For three minutes, Gil visualized what he wanted from that machine. Electricity shooting through wires like ADAM through thirsty veins, diodes activating, cables igniting, cathodes sparking at his command.

With a flicker, the machine spat and sputtered to life. Its screen went light gray, then cut to static. A spark flew from its power cord, but the electricity held. The static began to focus; Gil commanded it to. Clearer, clearer, the picture began to take shape.

A picture of a man appeared on the screen in crystal clarity. Gil couldn't see the picture very well at all, but he could hear the voice clearly with his sharp ears.

"The third indispensable element in building a new prosperity is closely related to creating new jobs and halting inflation," the man said. He sounded important.

Gil smiled. He smiled a wide, serrated smile that cut across his fish face like a steak knife. He smiled wider than he had since going to Rapture. Maybe more than he ever had before.

The dreams didn't stop, though. No matter how sharp his mind became again, he'd never be able to block out the dreams. It's especially unpleasant when the most exciting thing on your schedule beside manipulating things with telekinesis is sleeping, and needed sleep, because you rarely can get to sleep at night even though your body needs a good amount of it to function. Stupid exothermic metabolism. Neglectable cold-bloodedness. Gil imagined that humans take their fast, hot, warm-blooded bodies very much for granted.

Concentrating made him very sleepy. When he practiced on the machines in the lab, he grew very tired very fast. Turning the television on and off was enough effort to earn him a nap. When the lab technicians returned later, he was asleep, leaning on the lab side wall of his tank. They looked at each other uncomfortably, debating on their current choice in career.

Eventually, they decided to go get coffee, and leave the horrid thing alone. Gil watched them as they left with one eye, frowning. Humans. He hated them, every last one of them.

Well... maybe not. There was one person. A single, solitary person that almost made him forgive humanity for being so wicked and terrible.

Almost.

###

_"Try again, Eleanor."_

_ Gil sat fidgeting in his chair, his dark, cloudy eyes flicking back and forth between Sofia's harsh glare and the frightened, tight look on Eleanor's face. Eleanor looked like she_ _was in pain, but Sofia didn't stop the test. She had to be right. The experiment had to be a success._

_ "Is it... a star?" Eleanor asked. Gil saw her bite her lip._

_ A few tense seconds passed, then Sofia smiled. It sent a shiver up Gil's back like the Devil himself. _

_ "Yes. It is a star," she said, her voice a low hiss of confident assurance. "That concludes the test, Eleanor."_

_ Replacing the Zener card back into the deck, Sofia wrote the results down in her notebook, nodding slowly. She made a series of check marks; a perfect score of 80 out of 80 hits. Eleanor could predict the outcome of the draw even before the card was pulled, though with a lot of effort. Her psychic powers were growing exponentially every day._

_ " Good job, Ellie," Gil said, smiling. "Very impressive."_

_ Eleanor's face lit up, but Sofia's soured into a hateful glare. Before her daughter could say anything, Sofia spat, "I specifically said to withhold praise, Doctor. You could upset the experiment."_

_ "S-sorry, D-Dr. Lamb," he stuttered. "But it is impressive. It seems that the experiment was a success."_

_ "Stop kissing up to her, Doctor," Eleanor said, crossing her arms. "She doesn't care anything about any of us."_

_ Sofia was livid. You couldn't really see it in her face, which rarely changed from the placid pool of calm it seemed to be permanently, but in her chilly blue eyes there was raging hellfire like nothing Gil had ever seen. Her hand twitched, and he moved to stop her from slapping her child, but she didn't. She only stood and roughly pulled Eleanor up by her arm. _

_ "Very disrespectful, Eleanor. I thought I raised you better," she snarled. "Perhaps a few hours in your room will teach you to hold your tongue."_

_ Eleanor looked back at Gil with terror, and he stood up on his shaky legs, leaning on his cane. _

_ "P-please, Dr. Lamb, d-d-don't punish her," he whimpered. "She's a t-teenager. You know how they are."_

_ Glaring evenly, Sofia let go of Eleanor's arm. The girl pulled away from her, wrinkling her nose. She stood slumped between the two adults. _

_ "Both of you will take the train and return to Fontaine Futuristics," she said coldly. "I need to perform diagnostics. You _both _will be monitored."_

_ They both let out a sigh of relief. Anything to get away from _her_. _

_ An armed escort led them through the church of the Family. Gil lagged behind, huffing and puffing as he stumbled along with his cane. Everything was hurting, every inch of his body. His skin burned, his eyes ached, and his bones were threatening to give out on him. Eleanor looked back, her soft eyes full of concern._

_ "Hang on a minute, Brother Argus," she said to the guard. She stepped away from him, and approached Gil with one pale hand outstretched. "Are you alright, Dr. Gilbert? You don't look well."_

_ Gil smiled at the name Eleanor had called him when she was a child. Everything was blurry._

_ "I'm just a little woozy," he lied. "I'll be fine."_

_ The guard snorted, hefting up his machine gun and eyeing them. "We're on a schedule, Your Grace," he said to Eleanor. "The Lamb wants us to go."_

_ Eleanor and Gil exchanged looks, but obeyed. The three of them made their way through the darkness to the train station. When they got there, Gil felt Sofia's eyes on them. Everywhere, on every grungy wall and rusting metal bulkhead, The Lamb's message screeched at him from thousands of posters. Butterflies seemed to surround them, but GIl knew he was only hallucinating. He told himself that as he thought he saw the eyes of the thousands of Lambs following him through the dark corridors. _

_ Boarding the train, Eleanor gave him a smile. He followed her, and as they sat down, she snickered, "My mother seems to be quiet the hypocrite."_

_ Taking the controls, the guard turned and snarled at them. "The Lamb told me that you two aren't supposed to talk," he barked. His swollen, reddened Splicer eyes snapped into focus on Gil, and shot him a baleful glare. They went quiet. _

_ A hiss of steam escaped the side of the train as the pneumatic pumps came to life, and the huge door slowly came open, a lick of sea water came up to the hull. Blinking sleepily, Gil couldn't help but think about all the gears and pistons at work in that fabulous machine: magnets, steam engines, electric power rushing around at the speed of progress. Machines tended to be his only true pleasure these days. They were so much more tolerable than people, quieter. _

_ Water rushed in around them as the train car left the building, speeding off to the other side of the city. Huge kelps sparkled with bioluminescence, but they bored him. He looked at his feet for the next few minutes._

_ 'Like I was saying, she's totally bonkers now, isn't she?'_

_ Gil jumped, looking around. He turned to the guard, but he was acting like he didn't hear anything. Eleanor was smiling coyly, one eyebrow raised. _

_ 'Don't be a silly, Dr. Gilbert. He can't hear us! My voice is in your head!'_

_ He hiccuped, staring at her. She was telepathic. _

_ 'Isn't it great, Dr. Gilbert? We can talk without Mother knowing! At least one good thing came out of all of this, right?'_

_ Pausing, Gil tried to think of a response. Then he realized that she could hear him thinking, so he just thought, 'I suppose you're right, Ellie. Now what were you saying about your mother?'_

_ Eleanor smiled, and thought, 'she's a hypocrite. She says she's free of the self, but she puts up all these posters. She's more conceited than any of the bad people she's always telling her little flock about. Bonkers. Bonkers, all of them.' _

_'This is incredible.' Gil thought to her. 'I'd never guessed that you would... amazing.'_

_ He wanted to say more, but concentrating was very hard. He grew tired, and gave Eleanor a pained look. She frowned, and their communication went cold. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, and for a second, everything seemed better. She actually cared about others. She wasn't full of self-righteous fury or clinical calm-she was normal. How she managed that, Gil didn't know; what he did know, however, was that he was the only person in the world that she trusted. It was a huge and frightening responsibility, especially with... with..._

_ Like a vapor, Gil's train of thought vanished. His eyelids suddenly felt very heavy. _

_ With a massive clang, the train stopped at Fontaine Futuristics. As the train stopped, it jolted, and Gil realized that he had fallen asleep. Looking around, he hiccuped and tried to reorient himself, but everything was just so _blurry_. Eleanor stood, and helped him up, handing him his cane. _

_ 'I'm sorry, Doctor," she thought to him. That's it. Just 'I'm sorry.'_

_ The group disembarked, and came under the cold eyes of Dr. Lambs many hundreds of posters again, now broken up by the smiling, plastic faces of happy people benefiting from all the wonders of Fontaine's operations. Stronger arm and faster brain, as the saying goes. Gil flinched when he was surprised around a corner by a cheery scream from the automatic announcements, still running on a constant loop in the void, even after all these years. _

_ "Feeling tired? Is the daily grind getting you down? Fontaine has a product for y-you-y-you!"_

_ Crackling wickedly, the cheerful voice cut in and out, fading and slowing. Or maybe it was just his imagination? His head swam, and he began to stumble. The golden bars and rusting waste of the lobby began to swirl and spin, the ground becoming a useless jelly under his feet. _

_ "Dr. Gilbert!"_

_ That was the last thing he heard. _

###

Twisting in his sleep, Gil felt himself falling into a nightmare. No. Anything but this. He couldn't live through this again. Whimpering a high-pitched, keening whimper, he gripped the floor of the tank, grinding his claws into the cement. Scattered thoughts of worry from humans floated into his space, but he ignored them; all of his power was fighting this memory.

Dr. Riley was watching. He had his arms crossed, and his face was nervous. There was a haunted look behind his eyes.

###

_Coldness. Coldness and blackness. A shivering, creeping ice was worming through his veins, leeching the life from his weakened body. This was it. He was dead. _

_ No, he wasn't dead. He could hear his own heartbeat echoing in his ears. He could feel his fingers and toes, and sensation filled him slowly, telling him that he was floating in space, able to move but unable to touch anything. _

_ Panic flooded his system, making him twist and turn, trying to find some sort of horizon to balance himself. Nothingness spread out in all directions. _

_ "Please stop thrashing, Doctor. You will damage the machinery."_

_ Lamb. Her voice sent a cold chill through his body. He stilled, and looked around for her. All he saw was darkness._

_ "Please light the chamber, Brother Nelson."_

_ A blinding, searing light filled his vision, like something from another world. He cried out, and a strange sound scraped against his ears, a horrible screech from some sort of massive, vicious animal. His voice choked off, and he swallowed deeply: something was very wrong. _

_ "We were afraid that you would never return to us, Doctor. You have been unconscious for several weeks," Lamb went on. Gil could make out her shadow in the bright light as his eyes adjusted. She came into view, but he could barely see her; there was a barrier between them, filthy glass. His vision was very blurry, besides. _

_ "But you have now. Vital signs are normalizing, but your body is still very much in flux. I'd advise you to stay very still and calm," Lamb said. She adjusted her glasses, and wrote something down in her notebook._

_ Gil tried to speak, but the sound of his voice was garbled and echoed back to him. He became aware of the fact that there was a mask feeding him air. He was in a tank! Claustrophobia, however, became the furthest thing from his mind. _

_ If he was in a tank, then Sofia put him there. She was going to make him a Big Daddy. This was her endgame: dispose of the prototype, because now she had her first Utopian in her innocent daughter. _

_ 'Don't do this!' He screamed in his head. He didn't know if he had Eleanor's telepathy, but it was all he could do. 'Please! Dr. Lamb, I'll do anything! Just don't make me one of _them_!'_

_ A gentle frown appeared on Sofia's face. Did she hear him, and would he sway her?_

_ "I have no plans to convert you, Dr. Alexander," she said softly, calm and saintly again. At least she could hear him._

_ "You seem to be doing something very interesting all on your own," she followed. "I wouldn't stop such a fascinating process. You will remain here where we can observe you."_

_ Gil shivered, unable to understand what was happening. _

_ 'Why would you do that?' He thought. _

_ Sofia didn't answer. She only turned and walked away, waving for the lights to be turned down. Then, in one glorious, hope-filled moment, she turned around. Would she reconsider? Would she bother to tell him what was happening? _

_ "Oh. It almost slipped my mind," she said. "Now that you're conscious, you will no longer need that mask. Nelson, cut the air supply."_

_ Bubbles. His precious air was suddenly sucked out of his lungs, and water filled his mouth, making him scream. The mask lifted up and vanished, leaving him to drown. Why? Why did she do all this, drag him here and lie to him, then just kill him? All of his precious air drifted away, and desperation seized him, but there was nowhere to go. He was doomed! His hands slammed against the glass of the tank as he fought with all his failing strength to break through._

_ His hands weren't his own._

_ For a few horrifying moments, Gil somehow forgot that he was drowning and looked at his hands. They were horrifying. Foul, membranous pink skin clung to knobby bones, useless because the fingers were connected by webbing. Fish hands. His hands had been rather ugly lately... but... but... _

_ He was breathing. Gil realized it very slowly, but he was breathing underwater. His hiccups had stopped, and he felt very comfortable, just breathing underwater. Very slowly, ever so slowly, he reached up to his neck-it wasn't easy, with the tank walls being so close. _

_ Three long slits went from right behind his jaw across the sides of his neck. _

###

Now he was awake again. Gil stared at the wall, his blunt-snouted face totally blank. He never saw Eleanor again after that day, even though he had screamed and screamed in his head for her to hear him. She forgot about him, and left him to rot in that tank for a year. In that time, he had refined his abilities to speak with the machines around him, most of them of his own design, and recorded his final memoirs, pleading for the next person to come along to kill him, to end his suffering.

He had hoped that maybe, just maybe, Eleanor would be that person. But no. It was her new guardian, Subject Delta. The new reason for her existence, her new guide and focus. She had forgotten all about the man who had raised her like his own daughter, who had given up so much for her. The man who had volunteered to be the first subject for the Utopian experiment, so Sofia wouldn't use her as her guinea pig.

So he had been wrong. He _didn't _have anyone. He was totally alone in the world.

And he didn't owe mankind anything.

**###**

**Hello again, little minions. This took a long time to write, but it was a labor of love. Also, fun fact: this was not the first time Richard Nixon made made a guest appearance in my writings. Why? I don't know. What about you? Who's your favorite president? Mine are Lincoln and Wilson. Good guys. Not like Nixon. Whatever. I'm tired. Read and review (well, if you're down here, you obviously read. XD) But if you take the time to review, I will personally come to your home or place of business and give you tasty pudding. **

**Cheers,**

**Skull**


	4. Sometime, in Doctor Riley's mind

Three AM.

Four AM.

Five AM.

At six thirty, Dr. Riley was staring at himself in his bathroom mirror, trying to drown his burning throat with water and chase away his nightmares. His face was haggard; deep, dark furrows dragged the flesh under his eyes, and a glaze of sweat clung to his tan, wrinkled skin. Listless and dull, his eyes stared unevenly at him from the reverse world behind the glass, frightening him. Reminding him of the man from his dreams, the dark man. The mad doctor that taunted him in his sleep.

Ever since he had his dream in the aquarium, Riley hadn't slept well at all. Every night, he was perused by wicked specters that reached out to him with frigid fingers-evil things, but things from his own imagination. The man with the scraggly mustache and chilly eyes had appeared in his dreams, but Riley knew that it wasn't really him. There wasn't that air of total dread, of pure terror and otherness, of being invaded by another force. No, this man that plagued his dreams now had a smile that seemed fake and plastic compared to the half-smirk, half-snarl of the mockingly kind creature that he had seen that night.

Riley pressed his hands into his face, trying to hide from his own frightening visage. His beard seemed much grayer than it had been a few months ago, and every part of him hurt. Riley's fifty years were finally catching up to him, grabbing at his ankles and trying to trip him; for the first time, he reached into his medicine cabinet and swallowed a few arthritis pills dry.

Why couldn't everything just go back to normal?

He knew that out on his kitchen table, there was a tall pile of letters from every colleague he knew he had (and a few that he hadn't) and government agency that could possibly be affected by the discovery of _Trematolestes Superstes. _Why did the Department of Defense need to know about a giant salamander? Riley didn't know, and he was afraid to find out. One of his nightmares had armed National Guardsmen beating down his door and arresting him. He had tried to cancel it all out, and it was easier because he had been ordered not to talk to the media, but nothing could stop him from thinking about it every waking moment of every day.

Just when his life was starting to get normal again.

Staggering awkwardly, Riley made his way out of his bathroom and into the cramped hallway of his small house. He walked up to the second door on his right, and turned to face it: it was painted pink, and there were posters hung up on it. The Beatles. The Monkees. He didn't get it, but it made her happy, and that was all that mattered.

Her father, his son-in-law, had been killed in Vietnam, and her mother, his precious Loralie, had taken to vices and ruined herself. Now the girl behind that door was the only thing he had of both of them. Running his hand down the grains and whorls of the door, he thought about how his discovery would effect her.

Sighing deeply, Dr. Riley crawled back to bed. At eight, he needed to be back at the aquarium; all of his sick days were used up, anyway.

###

"Dr. Angelos wants to do another biopsy on the liver today. I told him that it's hard enough to feed the thing, let alone drain the tank, find the liver and put a needle in it before it flips over and kills us all. If I have to spend one more minute staring through a microscope at that ugly godforsaken thing's slime, I'm gonna jump off a bridge."

Doctor St. James scowled into the lens of his microscope, chattering on and on while Riley stared into space. Riley traced patterns in the residue of bleach water left from wiping off the table, nodding and agreeing numbly as his friend ranted about the hours they had to keep and how cold it was in the lab and how his wife was bothering him about how his clothes smelled after work. St. James waved his free hand, nearly hitting Riley in the head, but Riley was used to it after knowing him for so long. Young and full of anger, the brown-haired, green-eyed Vermonter was a wild card and a good friend, albeit chatty and loud.

"Nothing good is going to come out of this," St. James went on. "You know, Chris? I get the willies whenever that blob gives me the stink-eye. Everybody hates it. I think it hates us, too. That thing gives me looks like it wants to write me a strongly worded letter, right? 'Specially after we didn't let it eat Gould last week."

Laughing, St. James clapped Riley on the back. Smiling uncomfortably, Riley tried to laugh.

"Heh heh. I guess so," Riley stuttered. Breaking eye contact, he looked for something witty to say, but only spread out a long, awkward silence. He actually didn't think it was very funny. Why didn't they tell him that the specimen had tried to kill one of the staff? Maybe they didn't think he needed to know, or maybe they thought someone would call him, but... he hadn't known. It was a killer. Turning, he faced the creature's tank; it was on the other side of the murky cloud of dirty water, out of sight. It was hiding.

"Morning papers!"

The sound of Dr. Mars's voice made Riley jump. He turned around, and saw a massive pile of papers squatting in front of him, with St. James already counting them with a pained expression.

"Good morning, boys," Mars said, smiling her smile that meant she was glad that she wasn't doing lab work that morning. "You alright, Dr. Riley? You look like a mess."

Unconsciously, Riley nodded. "Haven't been sleeping well."

Mars frowned, raising an eyebrow. "You know you've been saying that for the past three weeks. You look really sick. Maybe you should see a doctor."

With a tired smile, Riley reassured her. "I've been working too hard. I think we've all been working too hard. Maybe with the exception of Dr. St. James here. He's too _esteemed _to do any grunt work."

St. James shot him a poisonous look. "I'd hit an old guy with glasses, you know," he spat, but he was grinning his stupid head off. Lifting the stack of papers, he started away from the lab area.

"I know some lucky interns who need something to do," he said as he left, and Mars and Riley were alone.

Dr. Mars was a good person. Riley had known her ever since she started college, he knew her as a hardworking, witty, honest young woman who was making great strides in a male-dominated field. She was a great diver, and had a way with animals-but she was a bit like a shark. Her dark eyes were sharp and cold, and she was so driven that she had no qualms about trampling others underfoot. He knew that in school, she had applied for every scholarship she could, even though she didn't need them. She wanted to be perfect. He liked her for that.

"I think everyone's overreacting," Mars said. Riley was surprised.

"Since when do you have a sense for overreacting?"

She gave him a playful shove. "I have my limits. Nobody wants to do the night shift anymore. They're all scared Magnus is gonna jump out of his tank and eat them."

"And you don't?"

She smiled, crossing her arms and turning toward the tank. "I think he's just misunderstood. I think he's just a little too uncanny for some people."

Cocking his head, Riley turned to look, too. "Magnus" was visible now, as they were restoring the PH and clarifying the water for the day. It was watching the people walking by its tank, snarling at them with its huge, sharp, banana-sized teeth. Its tail lashed back and forth very slowly. Riley had to agree with his friend here.

"I think we're a little uncanny to him," he said. Mars laughed.

"But really, Doctor!" She said. "Look at him! This _is _the missing link! He's got five well-defined digits on each appendage, outer ears, a mammalian circulatory system... just look at his face! The sketches we've been able to make of his jawbone are earthshaking by themselves. "

Riley swallowed. She had to point it out, didn't she? He had been trying to ignore it, but now he couldn't: the thing looked so _human_. Those eyes pierced him even from here, and it chilled him to the core. The way it moved, with such deliberate, slow movements that could only be planned and thoughtful. It blinked, sighed and seemed to emote like a human. It was obvious that Magnus was far more intelligent than he put on. (It, he- whatever Magnus preferred to be called.)

But Riley already knew that. He had known that from the moment the _Bluefin _began to lean to its side and those _eyes _locked onto his with such fury and _madness _it was unreal.

"I don't think so," Riley said quietly. "We don't know yet."

Mars huffed, raising an eyebrow.

"You're just scared of him, too."

Maybe he was. Maybe it was all in his head, another one of his crazed delusions. Years of therapy hadn't managed to shake the crazy out of him, and a few words from sweet Dr. Mars had made him realize it. He was stark raving mad now, hallucinating about a big pink fish that he imagined was laughing at him. He had one bad dream, and now his whole reality was falling apart.

"I guess I am scared. You know how I am."

Mars smiled and patted his shoulder, turning to leave. Riley watched her look up at the tank with no fear in her eyes, and the creature regarded her with a venomous look. It seemed to follow her as she walked away, stalking her. It scared Riley more than it should have, making him shiver deeply.

It turned to face him as Mars left the lab. Those gray eyes fixed on him, and a smile seemed to appear on its hideous face, its mouth curving up tauntingly. There was hate in those eyes again.

Riley resolved to stay out of the lab after that. He left after Dr. Mars, walking with purpose, as if to show the creature that he was angry and wasn't coming back. He shoved through the swinging doors and out into the hallway, and it was then he realized that he was sweating bullets and quivering like jelly. He felt a presence was watching him, and he fled to the outer buildings. Paranoia was clawing at the edges of his mind; maybe spending a few hours with the belugas would clear his thoughts.

It didn't.

###

Another three AM. The moon was hanging fat in the open window, staring at him like an eye. Like a gray, membranous, primitive eye. Riley pulled down the curtain quickly, almost ripping it from its brackets.

Sweat ran down Riley's skin, soaking his t-shirt. He felt like crying, but he couldn't because he thought he'd be sick if he did. None of this was real. He must have hallucinated the whole thing; did that mean that he was dreaming now? Oh, that was a terrifying thought! Why did he have to have that thought? Gripping his hands together tightly, he tried to wish the whole thing away. When he opened his eyes again, he was still in his bedroom, still sitting on his bed, still cowering under the light of the moon.

Julie wasn't home. When he had gotten back that afternoon, he had been greeted by a sticky note on the fridge instead of a hug and a "Hi Grandpa!" It said:

_Dear Grandpa,_

_ I'm spending the night at Becky's so we can work on our project. See you tomorrow morning!_

_ Love, Julie_

Julie. He only wanted to hold his granddaughter, and get a little piece of his old life back. If he was going to stay sane, he needed something familiar to grip like a lifeline.

Riley let himself, if only for a moment, remember why he was so afraid. The things that lurked in the dark and kept him from sleep all these years, the things that kept him washing his hands and rejecting invitations to far-off waters and great adventures, the things that kept him in the classroom or in the safety of the nearby bay. He used to be brave, and some of that still stayed with him, but now he was far too crazy to be that man anymore. That man would have been excited thinking about an alien intelligence captured in the Atlantic.

I'm not crazy, he told himself. I'm just overworked, overtired. The specimen must exert electrical signals that are making me hallucinate. My medications are interacting. I am insane, and I'm losing my grip on reality. Nothing is real anymore; I died when I got stuck on the Comet at Coney Island when I was a kid. I'm on an alien spaceship and they're experimenting on me.

Rocking slightly, Riley buried his head in his hands. His overactive imagination was getting the best of him, and there wasn't anything he could do. Lying down, he tried to put it all out of his mind.

He couldn't. The sun was up and his radio beeping as soon as he fell asleep.

###

When the first early risers arrived at the lab the next day, everything was turned on.

Riley was disturbed as he watched the IT department looking around, scratching their heads at the switched on screens and lit bunsen burners. His face turned very white when he realized that the creature was awake much earlier than it normally was, watching them from its tank, its bright eyes flicking in its head. A net of chum sat uneaten on the other side of the tank.

But at least it wasn't smirking; Riley felt a rushing wave of relief as he walked past the tank and the creature didn't turn and look at him. He even looked up at it, and its eyes remained on the bespectacled man thudding his fist on the side of a CPU tower against the wall. There wasn't even that hint of a smile on the thing's face-a look of dull annoyance at the noise was its only expression.

"Hey there, Doc," Dr. St. James said to him from the lab. Riley turned and smiled at him.

"What's going on?" He asked. St. James nodded toward the sparking, damaged monitors and CPUs being gutted to stop their wild malfunctioning.

"Big power surge last night. Knocked out every breaker in the whole facility. We'll have to close today to keep all the fish alive and sweep all the busted light bulbs out of the carpet," he said.

Squinting, Riley surveyed the scene. "Weird."

"But you know what's really weird?" St. James asked. Riley shook his head.

"Every single thing went out except for Magnus's tank. Big guy was just fine when we came in this morning when we had five sharks go belly up in rehab tank two, just ten feet away. He's got himself a guardian angel."

Riley's stomach dropped. He stared at St. James for several awkward seconds, his eyes going back between his friend and the massive animal in the tank.

_He was right. _There's no denying it, his brain shouted. This is the proof! There _is _more out there, Mr. Safety! Everything you've ever been afraid of is and always has been real!

Shaking his head, Riley dismissed the thought. This was stupid; he was being stupid. The creature wasn't even watching the IT kids anymore- it was on the other side of the tank, curled up and hugging its tail. It was all a coincidence, this happening. There was no way that old Magnus, nothing but a big, stupid, cold-blooded animal, was masterminding any kind of evil plot.

Everything else seemed to go well that day. No voices intruded on Riley's thoughts, and things were peaceful. Magnus (even Riley had taken to calling the thing by his given name) slept quietly, barely moving and only stirring when he was fed. That intelligence seemed gone from his blunt face, leaving a dull cast of animal stupidity.

Part of Riley felt sad.

As he settled down for the evening shift, pulling out his notebooks and taking up some of Dr. St. James's notes, he turned and faced the creature. He was still asleep, his huge pink back to the glass, looking dead. Then again, he always looked like that, even when he was awake: a big, dead-looking blob that didn't look like it would survive another night. Even though he had put on a lot of weight, and his color had improved a lot, he still looked like something strange you'd find festering in the gears of a fish processor, or decaying in a silt sample from the deepest depths. Something that science would have a passing interest in until it was proven to be something totally mundane.

Any day now, Riley thought, they're going to find a whole school of these things out in the Arctic Circle. It'll be a big discovery, but all of the mystery and magic of _Trematolestes Superstes_ will be gone. No longer an exotic sea monster, but a missing link, a living fossil that's just as natural as the loathsome coelacanth with its lobed fins or the frilled shark with its fantastic collar. Someday Magnus's skeleton would hang in a glass case at the Smithsonian, next to a picture of the _Bluefin _and her crew.

And he'd be happy with that. He told himself that adventure was danger and danger had to be avoided. He was afraid of so many things, and the unknown was the top of the list; the unknown could kill you, or drop you into a dark pit with nowhere else to go. He'd be alone, and Julie would be alone.

He was shaking again. When he was nervous, Riley remembered the words of his psychiatrist and reached for his journal.

_'Am I going crazy?'_ He wrote. '_This thing is driving me off the deep end. I feel like its taunting me again. Is it intelligent? It looks at me like a man would look. _

_ ..._

_ 'Way to go, Mendel. Give this fellow a prize.'_

He stopped dead. His heart suddenly heaved, threatening to give out. For almost a minute, he stared at the sentence he had just written. Or, to be exact, the sentence _he didn't write_.

It was like his hand had suddenly taken on a mind of its own, and wrote out those nine words like his brain was a telegraph machine. Breathing slowly, he stared at his errant hand, unable to understand what had just happened. He looked around, but no one seemed to have noticed.

It had to be the creature.

_Brilliant, my good man. It looks like we have a new Captain Nemo on our hands. I'm awed by your perception._

Now the voice was in his head. It pried into his consciousness, pawing though his brains like a huge, frozen hand. Goose bumps went down his back as he recoiled from the touch, but he couldn't escape it. Something was _inside_.

_Very nice to see you again, Doctor. I missed you. It's been a while, but I knew your weak aura as soon as you pulled that _horrendous _car out in front. Ugly things, these new surface cars. Boxy. Quite unpleasant._

Riley grabbed the side of his head, gasping and terrified. His hand slid across the table, knocking beakers and bottles out of the way, almost spilling them, but something seemed to keep them from falling. Riley slid into a crouch.

_No no, we can't be breaking any glassware. I remember it being expensive... and we wouldn't want to attract any attention. _

_Poor man, let me help you up, _the wicked voice sneered. _Oh, wait. I can't. I'm behind three inches of glass. I also don't have use of my thumbs. I also couldn't get over there to you even if I wanted to, with me having limbs grossly disproportional to my body weight and useless little fins instead of feet. Well, that's life. We all get old and start to break down. Ooh, looks like you're breaking down right now, old chap._

Staring stupidly at the tank across the room, Riley saw the thing grinning at him. Those dead gray eyes were full of hideous mirth.

It was talking to him.

_How long did that take to get through your crass little mammal brain? Yes, I'm talking to you, numbskull. I'm talking and feeling _fine_. It's so nice to finally have a civil conversation with another human being. Well... I suppose that's not true. I'd rather be hooked through my gills and flopping on the end of a line than talking to _you_. _

There was so much hate, so much curdled malice in that voice, it almost made him feel sick. The thing in the tank was looking at him evenly, with human intelligence that could not be mistaken. He was looking into the face of an undeniable psychopath-just a very large and soggy one.

_You know, I thought that I was better for a while. After I got away from you people, kind of removed myself from all of the hate and stupidity of humanity, things improved. But then you came along. You ruined my life again. _

_ You. I remember you so well. You looked scared when I looked at you. Don't you know that I was scared, too? I was more scared then than you've ever been in your entire life. Have you ever been caught, Dr. Riley? Have you ever been pulled out of your home and imprisoned like a filthy animal? Have you ever been... betrayed? _

An image floated in dull definition in Riley's mind. It was a vague outline at first, but it sharpened, and a figure came into view.

_I am _not _an animal, Doctor. You're the first person I want to know that. I want you to know that you have a human being trapped in this tank, a thinking human being with... drives. Goals. _

It was the man, the doctor. In Riley's mind, he saw the slightly chubby figure of the mad doctor from his dream, his pleasant smile replaced by a dangerous scowl. He didn't look as composed and civil as he had before: sweat made his pale skin shiny, his hands quaked, and his rumpled brown suit was ragged around the edges. (It also seemed to be several sizes too small.) When his dark brown eyes flicked in their sockets, they seemed to flash yellow.

_Release me, Doctor. I'm giving you one last chance to negotiate my freedom. I personally don't care how hard it is; if you fail, I'll just go ahead with plan B. In no time I'll be strong enough to reach ever mind in this building, living and not. I could kill everyone. I could get everyone to kill everyone else. They'll chalk it up to a problem with the building, chemicals maybe, and I'll be moved. As soon as I'm out of this tank, I'll use my abilities to escape the transport and escape into the bay. I'll be fine, and you'll be dead. _

The man raised his hand. Even though it was only an image in his mind, the action terrified Riley. And it should have, as a few seconds later, a beaker exploded.

_Oops. Accidents happen._

_Crash! _The beaker turned to dust. Shiny glass powder flowed off the table in an almost fanciful way, glowing red hot and changing from sand to molten liquid that ignited the papers sitting on the table. The trance was broken as smoke alarms began to scream with horror at the growing blaze licking across the surface, and Riley stumbled away from the prancing fire. The image of the man and the hateful voice vanished from him mind for a moment.

"Gah!"

A spout of white foam quenched the blaze with a squelch, just as the sprinklers switched on, drenching everyone. Dr. St. James was standing near, his eyes wide, clutching the nozzle of a fire extinguisher in quaking hands. Frightened silence turned to frustrated murmuring in the lab, all eyes on Dr. Riley as he struggled to understand what had happened.

"What's wrong, Riley? You could have blown the whole place!" St. James gasped, wiping water out of his eyes. "What happened?"

Shocked and confused, Riley only stared at him, gaping stupidly. The cold hand had released his mind, leaving him with an uncomfortable silence in his head; across the room, the creature was vanishing into the murk of its dirty tank, its tail flicking dramatically as it disappeared.

"I don't know," Riley said. He shook his head slowly, his mouth still hanging open.

He really didn' know.

###

"Where are we going, Grandpa?"

Julie sat on her suitcase, her arms crossed over her knees, watching with worry as her grandfather packed clothes feverishly, practically flinging them from the drawers to the luggage. His face was sweaty, and there was a look of desperation on his face. Julie felt her guardian's fear, and it twanged terror in her that he himself had taught her. Whenever he was afraid, she was afraid, too. It was like they were _both _children.

"We're going on vacation," Riley said. "Just a short one. How'd you like to go to Uncle Richard's in Maine?"

Tilting her head, Julie thought about it for a moment. "No, I wouldn't, not now. I want to know why we're going first."

Riley's eye twitched. "We're going because we haven't visited your uncle in a long time."

"It's because Maine is _boring_," Julie said, crossing her arms.

"You didn't think that when you were little," Riley chuckled nervously, anything to take his mind off his task. Julie looked at him sharply.

Rolling her eyes, Julie got up and stomped off to her room. She turned around and gave her grandfather a look.

"Bor-_ing_," she said.

As she vanished behind the door, Riley let out a breath he was holding. Every part of him was quaking, as it always did when he was nervous, and he tried to focus on packing. Pack, his brain told him. Mechanical actions instead of introspective thoughts. Don't think about the thing or the doctor or how he's going to kill everyone if you leave and don't-don't...

He was dead. Everyone was dead. That thing was the devil himself.

So, like the coward he was, Riley was going to run.

Never again would he return to that aquarium or the whole state of New York, much less the sea or even the coast. His brother lived near the Canadian border, safely away from the water where sea devils could crawl out and devour him by night. He didn't know if he was crazy, or if the monstrous salamander rotting in that tank really was once a man. As soon as Julie was safe at his brother's cozy little cottage in the windy, snowy woods, he would escort himself to a nice, cozy hospital to get some help. He needed to be in a quiet room with white walls, where Magnus, the furious sea god, couldn't reach him.

Wiping sweat from his forehead, Riley zipped up his bag and put Julie's on top of it. Strapping them together, he hauled the load off of the bed and pulled it out of the room. Julie continued to ignore him as he trumped down the stairs, dragging their luggage behind him. Still more silence as he opened the front door and headed out to the car.

The night air was cold. It was the end of February now, and there was snow on the ground from the big storm a week before. Riley tried not to look up at the car as he loaded the bags into the back, thinking about... he shivered.

Boxy things. Quite unpleasant.

"Why are we leaving now?"

Riley jumped, and turned to see Julie standing in the doorway, dressed and holding their cat, Bouncy, in her arms. Bouncy meowed, struggling and pawing at her hair.

"We have to go now because it's a long trip," Riley said. He came up to her, smiling gently, seeing that there was a lot of discomfort and fear in her eyes. He brushed his hand over her face and Bouncy's head. Julie looked up at him with misty eyes.

"I'm sleepy."

"I am too, scout. I am too."

###

**ARRRRG. Chapter, Y U so short and uneventful? I tried really hard to make Dr. Riley sit down like an adult and be a real character, but I ended up making a really boring chapter in which nothing happened and no one died. Gil is really evil now. I'm scared of him. Evil! Gil sounds a lot like GLaDOS. I tried really hard to avoid that; maybe I should stop playing Portal Co-Op at three AM to make him stop making Portal references. I need an intervention. If Riley goes to grief counseling and encounters a giant robot, shoot me dead; just put me out of my misery. My brain hurts and Kristen Stewart is on my TV and I have a terrible cold and my cat is giving me a death look. (Kristen Stewart: Y U no look scared when ghost is eating your little brother? That three-year-old is a better actor than you!) **

**Anyway, this cake is great. It's so delicious and moist. We're just throwing science at the wall here, seeing what sticks. You know how the old saying goes: "When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down." **

**Twenty Internets and delicious cake to any test subjects that leave reviews for me. We appreciate your contribution to Science. I punch those numbers into my calculator... aw, forget it. I lost my train of thought. Oh wait- **

**SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEEEEEEEEEE!**

**That's enough. Stop, brain. Stop being a belligerent power and sit down. That's good. Stay there. I'm on really heavy duty cold medicine. Don't judge me. **

**Doctor Shemp, we're done here. Done making Portal references on a Bioshock fanfic, and done trying to spell "references" with a capital "R." **


	5. These Things Are Hard To Keep Track Of

_ "How are you feeling today, Doctor?"_

_ Gil couldn't see her very well. He could only see a blurry blue smudge on a gray and red background, washed out by light. Pawing his face, he tried to force the world to come back into focus: it felt like he had thousand-pound weights tied to his wrists. He was barely conscious._

_ "Doctor?"_

_ He didn't want to talk to her. If he concentrated too hard on telepathy, he'd forget to breathe. Breathing shouldn't be this hard! His brain wasn't wired to coordinate all of these different muscles just to breathe; from his jaw down to the new strands of muscle wrapping around his neck and throat, opening and closing those... slits. They were much larger now, with little combs that peaked out as he drew in water and let it out. It was very hard to keep his sanity when he thought about how he had _gills _now. _

_ 'I'm feeling rather poor, thank you for asking, Dr. Lamb,' he thought to her. 'I'd very much like to be out of this tank. It's very small, and very uncomfortable. And the water is dirty. And I'm in pain.'_

_ Lamb smiled. It made Gil feel sick to his stomach. _

_ "You will not be in pain forever, Doctor. This is a process. You are in a delicate state. A chrysalis. A... a nymph."_

_ Gil laughed. It was a wretched sound, like gears grinding together against their axles. _

_ "That's what you say to everyone," he thought. "But I suppose it's a bit more literal with me."_

_ Lamb didn't laugh. Her mental landscape remained flat and desolate in Gil's mind's eye, her thoughts locked away where he couldn't reach them. As hard as he tried, she remained a mystery; a psychic black hole. Looking into her mind or even trying to talk to her was like trying to beat down a brick wall with a bar of soap: after a while, your weapon breaks into a messy pulp, your hand is bloody, the wall is still there, and you feel very silly. _

_ "And Doctor Lamb?" Gil went on. "What of my worshippers?"_

_ The Rapture Family had a way of justifying things. Lamb had no doubt changed her preaching after the experiment failed, changing Gil's role in the legend from the prodigal son that would lead them to the promised land, to the ferryman of the underworld. They feared him because Lamb taught them to fear him. Now, every week or so, they would shuffle into his chamber and offer him a sacrifice, hoping for safe passage for their friends who did not believe in the Rebirth. It scared him how they shrank away when he looked at them, how their hideous faces contorted in terror as they kneeled and offered wreaths of glowing flowers for the souls of their dead. It was like he was some sort of monster._

_ "They have moved on," Lamb said. "They are very excited about the Rebirth, as they should be. This is a time of jubilation."_

_ Her flat, monotone voice contrasted the word "jubilation" horribly. _

_ Still, it made him sad that his cult had stopped visiting. He needed company, any kind of company. He was lonely._

_ "That's unfortunate," Gil thought. He didn't see Lamb's eyebrow go up. _

_ "Your selfishness is unbecoming, Dr. Alexander," she said. "It was the Family that gave you this wonderful gift. You are enlightened, uplifted. You are a being of great wisdom and beauty."_

_ "I... am? I don't believe you're telling the truth, Doctor."_

_ Even inside his own mind, his voice had a trembling weakness to it. She filled him with terror._

_ "I am the truth," Lamb said simply. "Count your blessings, Doctor."_

_ With that, Lamb rose from her chair on the control deck above his tank and sauntered off. Without another word, she flicked her perfect, lovely hand and shut off the overhead lights, leaving him in he dark. Pitch blackness. At least when it was dark, it was harder to tell how small his tank was, and how... different everything was. It was peaceful; almost nice. Now he had time to think. _

_ He wasn't sure how long he had been in this tank. Most of the time, he slept deathlike, dreamless sleep in the dark, sometimes for days and days at a time. He'd fall under the slip of blackness and awaken to find that his tank walls had been totally obscured by vines of the ADAM rich plants that made their homes in the dark damp of his chamber. Soon enough Splicers would tear them down and consume them, but the next time he awoke, he'd be blinded again. How long did it take for them to grow? Weeks? Months? _

Years_? _

_ No, it couldn't be years. _

_ Was his tank smaller than it was before? It seemed to be. When he put his hand out into the darkness, he could touch the glass easily. It was much harder to move his arms. He could feel the tank against his back, and if he tried to pull away from it, his knees would touch the glass. He was suddenly very claustrophobic. The walls were closing in! _

_ Gasping in water, Gil thrashed against the walls, looking for an imaginary escape. His head connected with the top, sending a shock through him that almost knocked him out. He had to get out! OUT! _

_ Something in the water changed. From outside the sealed horror of his tank, sirens were wailing and red lights flickered on. Lamb's freezing aura descended on him like a gale. _

_ "Thinking too hard about your situation will make you ill, Dr. Alexander."_

_ Consciousness slipped away like wet paper. _

_ ###_

Today, Gil was feeling unpleasant.

He was feeling like making a move.

Riley was out of the picture. He hadn't appeared in seven days, and now his colleagues no longer thought of him. Gil studied their minds, flipping through all their inane thoughts for any mention of him; nothing. Blast. Riley was such a party-pooper. A poor old fish couldn't get revenge and freedom in one fell swoop? It simply wasn't fair.

Oh well. He had better things to do. Maybe it would be better for Riley to read about it in the paper and know that he could have stopped it than to kill him with the rest.

It was closing time. Slanted rays of sunlight filtered through the lab's skylight, tingeing the walls orange. The sun was getting higher in the sky every day; a sign of seasons changing. Gil wanted to be back in the sea by spring. He was growing impatient with the routine every day; being fed, being studied, and being ignored. Today was the day for a bold decision.

There was one young man that he had picked out. Like a predator, he had scoped out this fellow, a friend of Dr. Riley's and a general dullard, to be his test subject. For several days, he had watched him: his name was Horace St. James of Plains, Vermont, son of Andrew and Anita, and aged 35. He was a thoroughly unpleasant, a pretentious, vapid fellow who believed he was far too intelligent for the huddled masses around him. He was perfect.

It had been a week before when Gil decided to choose St. James. Gil had been sleeping, lost and wandering in another of his memories; he was gripping the bottom of the tank, tense and just barely asleep, when he had been rudely disturbed by a tapping.

"What else do you do besides sleep, you big ugly blob?"

St. James had been standing there, his finger on the glass. Don't they teach people that the fish don't like it when you tap on the glass?

At first, Gil had tried to ignore him. He turned his back on the noise and vibrations, pushing off the bottom with his tail and swimming to the other side of the tank. St. James didn't stop. He was still standing there, looking impatient, as if he expected his captive to do a trick.

"I just don't know what we're going to do with you, Magnus," he said. Gil smirked. Now you care about me? Selfish humans. Humans that lie! Soon he was going to be in control.

That was when he had an idea. He had turned, looking at St. James with his filmy eyes, and sent him a thought.

_Bored. Leave the room._

A Trojan Horse. A telepathic message disguised as one of St. James's own thoughts.

St. James obeyed. To Gil's surprise and delight, the man moved away from his tank, a blank look on his face, and left the lab. Now, after commanding him about like a security robot for the past week, Gil was totally confident in his diabolical theory.

Perhaps, Gil thought, my victim would be better sane than paranoid like Riley. Riley always knew that the voice in his head was from somewhere outside; someone sane, someone... blind to the possibilities, would be easier to manipulate- and less likely to resist. Less likely to realize what was happening. St. James had no idea that, over the course of several days, Gil had been guiding him like a puppet every hour he was close to his tank.

St. James entered the lab then, right on time, right when the suggestion Gil had implanted in his mind the day before told him to. He went through the doors with his usual flair, parting them with outstretched arms like a celebrity. He strutted like a peacock up to the others huddled around lab tables on the other side of the room and said something Gil couldn't hear. He was smiling and laughing, right on cue. Gil smiled, his fangs popping over his thin lips. It was working perfectly.

Things quieted down, and the white coats went back to work at their tables; Gil watched St. James out of the corner of his eye. At 7:02, exactly, he picked up a test tube and looked at it up against the light- right on schedule. At 7:27, some time later, he left the lab for a few minutes, exiting in the same dramatic, lordly way he entered. He was gone for five minutes and ten seconds, and returned with a bottle of some surface sugar brew from a sandwich machine outside the door to the building. Like clockwork. Gil's smile grew.

"You guys should be going home," St. James said at nine 'o clock. He clapped one of the students working with him on the back with a wide, plasticine smile on his pointed face. "Take the night off. Go do what young people do. I'll clean up"

The students looked at each other, and smiled uncomfortably at their tutor before packing their things. St. James watched them down his beak-like nose in a way that a hawk might look at a litter of infant mice, very much unlike the fellow who was normally very warm with the younger people. Gil felt the collective unease of the students like a prickly sort of cold breeze, their frightened, confused thoughts muddled together. The mock St. James made them shiver when he set his eyes on them. Oh well. The process wasn't perfect.

After the students left, St. James remained where he stood, staring at the door as it swung shut quietly. His face went strangely blank, empty, confused as his commands imprinted on his brain stopped, and for a few moments his free will started to return to the surface.

_Stop_. _Turn around. You should, you know. Something interesting is happening._

Just as predicted, St. James obeyed, almost unconscious, but still believing he was acting on his own. It was so simple- Gil only had to justify each of his commands to get St. James to obey. It was so easy. The man had no idea he was being controlled.

Now St. James was facing him, their eyes meeting, Gil's face pressed up against the glass. A look of slight disgust crossed St. James's otherwise zombified face.

_Don't be like that. _Gil thought to him. _This creature is quite majestic. Wonderful. Great. _

"Great," St. James said stupidly. Gil grinned, feeling almost giddy.

_It _is _great, isn't it?_

"It is great, isn't it?" St. James parroted. He stepped closer, and the trance grew deeper. Enough child's play.

_I think that this creature is communicating with me. _

"I think that this creature is communicating with me."

_And I acknowledge that he has a greater intelligence than my own. _

This message was met with some resistance; St. James's eyes squinted, and he started to step away. Gil decided to alter it a little.

_It's to my advantage to listen to this creature's advice. _

He stepped back forward, and was back under the spell. Excellent. For once, everything was going according to the hastily thought up and poorly conceived plan.

_Who is your employer, Doctor St. James?_

"Who?" The doctor croaked.

_Why, Alex the Great, of course. You're promised a great reward for helping him with a little project. A science project. It will be fun. You've already signed the papers and made it official, Doctor. You are an employee of Fontaine Futuristics, a very _well paid _employee. _

"Alex the Great?" St. James said. His eyes had the widely dilated, dark look of someone under the effect of a Hypnotize Plasmid, but this was deeper. This fellow was a slave of his own mind.

_That's right... _Gil thought to him. _Excellent. You're on your way to a promotion, Dr. St. James. Your work performance is extremely satisfactory. As your employer, I am very proud._

"Thanks..." St. James said, his voice a dull gurgle. "Thanks... Mr. The Great."

_Don't be sarcastic, or I will kill you horribly and use your bones to pick my teeth. And I'll dock your pay._

"Yes sir. Sorry sir."

###

_"Mr. Bubbles will get better, won't he?"_

_ A pair of bright, glowing eyes showed up in the darkness, luminous like the dangling lures of the fish from the deep dark. She was shuffling from bare, dirty foot to bare, dirty foot, holding the hem of her tattered dress between two tiny fingers. Tears ran down her face, making pale greenish tracks in the gray filth caked on her cheeks. A tattered teddy bear was in her other hand, looking forlorn._

_ In the room behind her, a defeated Big Daddy was being operated on in the makeshift medical lab by a blood-soaked gaggle of barely-sane Splicer doctors. The poor beast had been hit by a falling steel beam and broken something important, but had still managed to drag himself and his Little Sister back to Fontaine Futuristics before collapsing like a flimsy paper doll. His wounds looked grave: a long, bloody gash ran across his back, and his helmet was caved in like a deflated balloon. The fallen knight had lost his steed and his sword, and was going to die alone. _

_ Well, not totally alone. _

_ From across the room, Gil watched the procedure with glassy eyes. He was having a better vision day; it wasn't a great day to be able to see. As much as he wanted to turn away from the suffering of this poor creature, he couldn't; these beasts were as much children to him as Eleanor had been. He had created them with his own hands, forged their armor and sealed them in it. His workmanship was obviously not a fine as he thought it was- not that he would ever be using his hands again. _

_ At least he was in a slightly bigger tank that day: it was the last of the month, and Lamb had ordered her cronies allow him to move to the tank in the downstairs lab, connected to his hellish little home tank by a short tunnel he could swim through. He was there for a checkup, to "monitor his progress," as Lamb had put it. Gil had asked why he wasn't in this roomier tank all of the time, and she had told him it saved electricity to keep him in the small one, the one growing more and more cramped every day. _

_ It was nice to be out and about. He was able to pop his stiff joints and stretch comfortably, swimming back and forth with unnatural grace. Don't think about it, he told himself. He ignored the fact that the Splicer doctors looked at him with fear and discomfort, and the numbers they had mumbled to themselves while they examined him. It was all in his head. His tank wasn't getting smaller! He was only imagining it in his stress and boredom. He was still himself- he just happened to have gills and webbed fingers now. Just odd little mutations, maybe caused by a bit of Plasmid programming still left in his recycled ADAM cells. A fishy Plasmid. It would work its way out of his system eventually, and those things would disappear. _

_ He was fine, just a little sick. In a few more weeks, he was going to have a clean bill of health and be free of tanks and gills and scientific scales saying that he was much, much heavier than he knew was possible. It was all in his imagination._

_ The Big Daddy was still alive. He even seemed to be doing better. The doctors had welded the cracks in his armor, and apparently his broken bones were set underneath. His breathing was regular again. It heartened Gil to see that he was going to live. Gil swam up to the wall, pressing his flipper-hands against the cold glass. The doctors were stepping back from the operating table, and a few stray sparks leapt from the Daddy's inner wiring. (Faulty.) A long, rumbling moan rose from the great creature's chest as the anesthesia wore off. Gil smiled a little. He was going to be okay! What a guy! Maybe there was hope for his own sad little life._

_ But like everything else in Rapture, this beautiful moment didn't last long._

_ Gil sensed that something was wrong. His ears pricked up at a violent wave of psychic energy, simple, rage-filled energy, erratic and at a painfully high wavelength. Gil whimpered, wishing he could block it out somehow; he was suddenly very afraid. Pulling back into a corner of his tank, he tried to get away from the furious buzzing inside his ears. What was going on? He couldn't make out the voices of the doctors, but he saw that there was some sort of commotion in the laboratory. Through the window he could see the doctors trying to hold the Daddy's arms as it fought against its chains. It couldn't escape, but it was in distress. Its simple, linear thoughts were full of fear and pain: it thought it was still being crushed by the metal beam. Oh no. This wasn't going to end well._

_ A crashing. Gil didn't know what happened until one of the Splicer doctors was riveted to the far wall. _

_ Roaring furiously, the Big Daddy ripped itself from its chains and knocked all the doctors away. The manacles cracked and fell away as if they were made of talc, sending fragments of metal flying. Another long, angry bellow. It was free! He had to get out of there!_

_ But Gil was trapped. The way out of this tank and into another was closed and sealed, and it wasn't like he could just climb up a ladder and run away! He watched wide-eyed as the Daddy battered its captors, spraying blood and viscera onto the stained white walls, swinging its huge arms like an angry child. It was a Rumbler, squat and strong, with off-sized porthole eyes glowing screaming red with terror and rage. Steam sprayed from its hydraulics, and sparks raced on the floor. _

_ Injured Splicers crawled away, the Daddy's fury not enough to kill them, but enough to make them forget their duty to the Family. Gil was alone, with nothing but a wall of glass between him and the raging Daddy. His heart hammered in his ears as he scrabbled at the concrete walls, thrashing around, looking for an exit that wasn't there. His own creation! This was all his fault! All this misery, all this pain, only to die at the gloved, metal hands of his own monstrous child! It was his fault!_

_ Thud! Thud! The Daddy's huge boots crashed into the metal floor. Gil could hear the cries of its Little Sister as she rejoined him though a destroyed glass pane. She grabbed its shoulder, and the Daddy continued its tantrum, now fueled by its need to protect the child. A door crumpled like paper as it forced its way thought, getting closer and closer to its creator, who was trembling in the corner of his tank, fins over ears, praying for a swift death. _

_ The rampaging Daddy ignored him completely, only swinging its lifeless right arm into the glass of Gil's tank as it thundered by, stumbling like a drunk. The Daddy wandered away. Gil was crumpled at the bottom of the tank, eyes closed. Nothing happened for a few seconds- the Daddy left, and its deafening steps grew farther and farther away. Now he could hear something else: a... whining. A sort of "EEEEEEEEEEeeeeeee" sound. Then there was a loud, final sounding "crack."_

_ Crack._

_ Crack._

_ CRAAAAAAAACK!_

_ The world fell apart. Everything that was and ever had been rushed out of his personal little world and he was dumped back into reality._

_ With an ear-destroying whoosh, the glass shattered into a thousand pieces, and the water rushed out, dragging him screaming with it. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was like being caught in a tsunami wave and dashed against the rocks. Everything was upside-down and inside out, tumbling like a falling nightmare, until, very suddenly, it stopped. _

_ The water ran out very quickly, vanishing down drains and rushing back into the ocean. Shocked, Gil didn't realize what had happened for a long few moments. He only knew that he had stopped moving and that there was a shard of glass digging into... his leg? It felt like it was somewhere near his leg, but not in his leg. He was probably just imagining it. He knew that the sound of water was finally out of his ears, and everything was clear and sharp. _

_ Slowly, the last of the water ran away, and Gil was completely on dry land. Cold steel was pressing on his thin-skinned belly, and he couldn't pull away from it. He suddenly became aware of the fact that he was breathing air._

_ Gasping, Gil filled his atrophied lungs and coughed wretchedly. His gills stung, wanting water. He breathed fast and hard, his middle aching and his throat burning, as he twisted around, looking for something to grab onto or push himself up with. A strange sound choked out of him when his arms gave out and he flopped back onto the ground. His limbs wouldn't get under him, and all he could do was flip over on his back, flopping like a stranded fish. _

_ He couldn't move. As hard as he tried to get his feet underneath him, his own anatomy fought back against him. He wasn't strong enough to even push up onto his elbows. Eventually, he gave up and sunk back onto his belly. Everything hurt. It felt like there was something very heavy sitting on his back, putting pressure on all of his joints. It was like a massive hand was pulling him down. _

_ That's exactly what it felt like. _

_ His mind dropped into panic. _

_ Thrashing uselessly, screeching unwholesome cries that seemed to come from another world, he fought against his own weight with all his strength. A loud splashing, and the sound of something heavy striking wetly against steel. He had to get away! Something must be holding him down, trying to drag him into the yawning abyss of the sea! He didn't know the only thing holding him to the cold, unforgiving metal was his own bulk. This wasn't real! There were hands pulling him down! Those weren't his own nails turned into claws, raking against the metal floor, and that wasn't his shadow looming against the wall in the broken, flickering lamplight. _

_ But that was his reflection, staring at him from a window out into the sea. Those were his eyes, turned huge, round and totally gray, like marbles. He stopped thrashing, and the horrible, horrible thing staring at him stopped thrashing. When he breathed, it breathed. When he let out a long, high-pitched whimper, a horrific scream ripped out of the monster in the window, exposing rows and rows of huge, sharp, curving teeth. _

_ There he was, built somewhat like a seal, but with sickly pale pink skin, shrunken amphibian limbs and a long, eel-like tail. A small fin ran down his back. He had a snout instead of a nose. Those _fangs_. _

_ That wasn't him. It wasn't him. He was just a man with some rather odd traits, just an ordinary human, perhaps a little spliced looking, who needed to be in water for the time being. He was just sick. He wasn't a fish. He wasn't a... a sea monster. This was impossible._

_ "Mr. B! Look!"_

_ The Daddy was back. Now it was calmed, and was fighting to retain its programming. Now it and its Sister were on an aimless patrol. The Sister was right near him, and prodding him with her needle. _

_ "Is it a fishy?" She asked. Gil froze. The Sister was standing somewhere he couldn't see her, but he could smell the deathly stench of ADAM leaching from her skin. The Daddy was only a foot from him, its boot mere inches from his head. It grumbled, trying to pull its charge away. She was still curious, intrigued by the scent of ADAM on this strange creature._

_ "Fishy," she repeated in her dreadfully grating, singsong voice. "Notta sharky, notta big, squeaky whale. Fishy."_

_ She left, growing bored. The sound of her voice still chattering and the heavy footfalls of her guardian vanished. Gil was alone with his own gasping breaths and his own heavy, aching bones. _

_ He was a fishy. A big fishy. He was helpless. He was bleeding from a shard of glass buried in his tail. _

_ He only wanted to go back in his tank. He needed water. There were people coming and alarms going off now, so he was going back very soon. He needed to be in water. Water. Cool water. Water that made him feel like he didn't weigh a thousand pounds. Water he could move in._

_ A pathetic whimper came out as a chattering, hissing sort of sound. Footsteps, fast and light, came down the metal staircase as Family members swarmed the chamber, searching for the rouge Daddy. They saw him, their god of the dead, crippled and immobile, like a mortal. _

_ Gil blacked out at this point. He barely remembered being lifted up and carried off, still unable to move on his own. Eventually, he was back in the water. He was dumped unceremoniously back into his tiny home tank, and the water rushed up to meet him like an old friend, drowning his senses and shoving him into silence. He was alone._

_ Crack. _

_ Crack. _

_ Crack went his mind. Crack went his sanity and his humanity. Gil's hands clenched as tightly as they could, and his forehead rested on the freezing cold glass. His gills pumped away, relishing the water. _

_ He would never be so vulnerable again. He would never flop uselessly on the ground, out of his element, immobile, helpless. _

_ He wouldn't be this thing staring at him in the glass. _

_ Gil raised his flipper-hand to his face, staring at it intensely. Long, white claws curved from the ends of his thin, webbed fingers. He touched his face, and his hand curved around a blunt, noseless snout and felt the smooth sharpness of protruding teeth. Bubbles rose from his nostril slits._

_ Pulling his hand away, Gil let it rest on the wall in front of him. His claws gripped little notches and scratches in the surface. Crack. Crack. More cracks formed in his delicate reality. _

_ Slowly, he dragged his claws down the glass, leaving long, deep gouges. He smiled. He smiled a wide, toothy smile that split his head in half. He was never going to be so small again. Never. _

_ On the other side of the room, there was a loud pop. Sparks flew from the ceiling, splashing onto the floor and fizzling in puddles of sea water. Another pop, another, and the room was plunged into darkness. Screens flickered as the king of machines' anger and madness grew and grew in his slimy chest. Doors slammed with enormous crashes, sealing off his chamber from the Family and Rapture. Electricity rushed into wires as the heart of the factory hummed on and off with the rageful psychic energy pulsing from its living core. _

_ He wasn't so powerless after all. _

###

I am the king. I am lord of all I survey. I am unquestioned. I am a god.

Gil breathed slowly, watching the door into the lab intently. It was three AM, and the full moon was just above the skylight, casting an ethereal silver light on his tank. He was growing impatient with his minion, but he knew that it was all going to pay off. If this worked, he was going to be in complete control. He passed the time by grooming his gills, thinking about conquest and power.

A sound reached his sharp ears. Someone was jiggling the lock on the door. Gil smiled a horrible, wicked smile, swimming to the front of the tank. Success.

St. James opened the door, backing into the room, his movements jerky and mechanical. He was carrying a heavy box, but his programming kept him from showing his struggle. He was a machine, nothing more. It was beautiful.

_Did you do what I asked? _Gil thought.

Looking up with a blank look, St. James stared at him like a zombie. His eyes were almost totally black, his pupils were so wide.

"Yessir," he replied. His voice had a slight questioning lilt in it, like confusion. He blinked for the first time after arriving. "They didn't have any sharks at the warf, though. I had to get a couple stingrays from the Chinese grocery on Portsmouth Avenue."

_Stingray has a gamey flavor. _Gil mused, eyeing the box that St. James had now set on the floor. _But I am satisfied. You have acquired the machinery I requested? _

"Yep," St. James chirped. He smiled a stupid smile. "But what's it for, Boss?"

_Our project. We need these things to build machines. I will show you how to do it. _

"Kay," St. James said cheerfully. He opened the box, and pulled out the stingrays wrapped in butcher's paper. Gil grinned.

_I could certainly get used to this._

Gnawing on the fish, Gil watched as his loyal assistant followed his every command, moving his fingers as nimbly as Gil himself did in his inventing days as he constructed a device from the box full of junk parts and scrap he had been instructed to collect. That stupid look stayed on his face as he worked, showing that nothing was going on in his head beside the orders Gil sent him over the psychic connection they shared. His control was complete. Gil finished the rays and peered over the side of the tank: St. James had the beginnings of a machine on his lap, and soon they would have everything he needed to assume control of the facility.

Then what?

Gil didn't want to think about that now. He was too far along in his plans to start second-guessing himself. His plan was _big _now. He was going to take control of everything, and be in complete power over one hundred men and women that had imprisoned him, tormented him, and planned to put him on display. It wasn't just about escaping anymore. It was about getting revenge on all these little ape people who dared to question his divinity.

Except that one. There was one.

_You're not much of a companion, are you, St. James?_

"No sir. I'm dull as a rusty nail."

What about the future? It wouldn't be hard to... do other things. He could do more than just kill all of these fools. He could trap them, lock down the building. With his captors captured... he could have fun. All of them could be put under his spell at the same time, and he could send them out into the world to do his bidding. The whole building could come under his control, then the next building, and the next. He could have an army. It was a brilliant idea!

Except that one. The one that was always bothering him in the back of his mind. The one that was kind to him. The one with memories of a broken family. She was special.

His eyes widened, and a new boundary of madness was broken in his twisted mind. Of course! It made perfect sense. This woman he saw every day, the kind one with the dark hair and bright eyes. She could only be her. She was grown now, but it was undeniable.

A laugh escaped him, a gurgling, unnatural laugh. She only needed to be reminded of her calling.

_The kingdom of Alex the Great must grow, Doctor. _He said, chuckling in his mind. _My __arm must reach beyond this tank. I will destroy everything and anything in my path if I feel so inclined._

St. James blinked, staring up at him. It looked for a moment like he was resisting, but then a dull smile appeared on his wan-looking lips.

"That's nice, Boss," he said.

_It is, my friend. Very, very nice. Maybe we should look into expanding. Perhaps we could start recruiting some new blood. _

"The Commissioner of Aquariums might be interested," St. James bleated stupidly, totally unaware of what he was talking about and smiling up at his employer. "Maybe we could buy out the whole facility."

_Yes. That would be marvelous._ Gil chuckled.

St. James gave him a wily look that frightened him. Gil suddenly realized that his influence may be having some unexpected side-effects: there was a sparkle in his subject's eyes that was distinctly... Splicer. Perhaps he was a bad influence on people.

They could do anything, but for some reason, he was having trouble thinking about the future, about bigger, grander plans. He just needed to focus on the now, that's what!

Now, what was this about?

It was about the _grand _plan, of course. The plan they had all along. This was about Lamb's plan, the Family's plan. This was about Utopia! It was about the perfect beings ruling over the imperfect, selfish, wicked ones. The ones who had captured him! He needed to continue the fight! This was his plan now. He and those who were good and pure were destined to spread their rule over the surface world, to cleanse it!

That was his plan, and it had been all along. It meant he was going to be free of this tank, of humans and of his own horribleness. And to do that, he needed _her _by his side, ruling with him, scheming with him, as the Lamb had planned in the first place. He would be her faithful servant, as she was the Utopian, the _pure _Utopian. She may have changed her appearance, but it was undeniable in his maddened mind. In the eyes of an insane monster, this one who was kind to him could only be her, because who else would be wise enough to recognize his brilliance?

Part of him just wanted to be free. He just wanted to be left alone.

So what better way to throw off his shackles than to cast them at his captors?

Gil smiled wickedly as he thought about it, and St. James smiled, too. Looking down at his partner, Gil felt rather proud. A stable, clever man turned totally insane in just a few days.

A new record.

###

Dr. Mars was getting worried.

It started out innocently enough. Her close friend and colleague, Dr. St. James, started staying at the lab late. Normally, if it had been anyone else, this wouldn't be strange at all- but St. James? He wasn't the type. Not that he was lazy, he just seemed to have other things in his life. He was an avid reader, she knew, and a volunteer. There was more to his life than science, making him the polar opposite of their other friend, Dr. Riley. His whole life was his job. It wasn't until Magnus arrived did he start acting like he had better things to do.

Then things came to a head.

Mars was at the lab one morning, and she found St. James asleep at a lab table. This disturbed her to no end. It was five AM, when most of the employees arrived at the aquarium, and he was there, unconscious and unmoving with some tools and bits of circuitry around his sleeping head. His lab coat was still on, and his hair was rumpled.

"Horace!"

Snapping up, St. James glanced around in a panic, a wire of drool swinging from his lip. He was breathing hard, like she had woken him from a nightmare. Staring at her with a hollow look on his face, St. James didn't look fully awake.

"Wha... what? What is it?" He slurred. Mars was concerned. Her friend had deep, dark bags under his green eyes, which were dilated and sick-looking. Was he on drugs? It looked like he had the worst stuff in his veins; toxic, awful stuff.

"You were asleep here in the lab," Mars said. Her hands went on her hips. "What are you doing here?"

St. James looked around, his face round with puzzlement. Rubbing his face, he wiped the drool from his lip and seemed to become coherent. He wasn't drunk- he didn't smell of alcohol, but his eyes were just so... unfocused. There was something in his pupils that reminded her of cataracts in the eyes of old seals and dogs, a white solidness, like an object somewhere deep in his eye.

"I... I-I-I don't know. I just fell asleep, I guess," St. James said. His lips were pale. His face was pale.

"And what's all this?" Mars asked, lifting up a hex wrench and waving it in his face. "Do you even know what this is?"

Blinking, St. James took the tool from her. "Of course I do. I was just... doing a project."

"What kind of project?"

This was met with silence. St. James looked down, swallowing, and then he stood.

"Don't worry about it. Just something to get in better with the boss. He wanted me to devise..." He trailed off for a moment, picking up bits of his project, "some sort of gate thing. Door thing. Whatever."

"You're lying," Mars snapped. It wasn't hard to tell.

"You need to get out of other people's business, Melody," St. James snapped. He was suddenly in her face. The room went very quiet.

"Someone's having a domestic!" Someone in the crowd whispered.

Undaunted, Mars didn't back down from his threat. She straightened, looking the taller St. James in the eye.

"I'm reporting this," she hissed at him. "And if you put a hand on me, I will hurt you. Don't think I can't."

St. James broke away from her. Snorting loudly, he turned, took up his tools, and left the lab with a dramatic swish of his coat. Murmurs started in the people assembled, but Mars could only stare after her friend. What was going on here?

St. James was never like this. Mars knew that he was sick, and sick with something terrible. Riley would just sit around and wait if he were there, and tell her that whatever it was, it was Horace's own personal business that they shouldn't get involved with. That wasn't her way of doing things. These people just couldn't take care of themselves, and they always gave her something to worry about. It was always on her with Riley- he was so flaky and afraid of everything, and all these other people were so fake. This was a show to them.

Her friend needed her. This was too strange.

She didn't see St. James for the rest of the day. She didn't seek him out immediately; maybe there was a part of her that was afraid of his sudden change in personality. Deciding to let it wait, she went to work and ignored the whispers of their coworkers. Things were getting strange around the lab these days.

It started just as suddenly as this problem with St. James had. Their friends, some of them longtime, had begun acting coldly. Everyone in the lab was tense and uncomfortable all the time: Albert Harrison, an engineer who worked full time at the facility, had snapped brutally at her the day before for just brushing past him in the hallway. He had been acting so strangely, muttering to himself and cursing sharply under his breath. Albert was normally so nice.

At six, everyone was leaving, and St. James still hadn't returned. Mars was doing some anatomical comparisons, looking between a hefty book on a table and her sketches of Magnus's skeleton, adding some pencil strokes as she needed them. She felt her subject's eyes boring into her as she drew. Even she was starting to get uneasy around the big guy.

"Oh, Magnus," she said quietly. "Everything's been going all screwy since you showed up. First Christopher, now Horace."

Her drawing of the creature was making her feel uncomfortable. The eyes in the black and white seemed to be as piercing as the ones in the pink, amorphous flesh. She closed her sketchbook, feeling sweat prickle on her forehead. Magnus was still watching her.

Standing, Mars crossed the room, her footsteps echoing in the quiet of closing time. Magnus was lying on his belly, pressed up to the lab side of his tank, his chilly gray eyes focused on her like a hawk on a mouse. Standing back, Mars watched Magnus's face and eyes with her heart starting to creep into her throat.

"There's nothing wrong with you, is there, Magnus?" She asked him, smiling a slightly crooked smile. "You're just a big lizard."

Magnus's large eyes blinked, a grotesque, slimy membrane sliding over their bright, focused lenses. He was staring with an intent, focused look, and there was a suggestion of a frown on his lipless mouth.

"What's wrong, big guy?"

The great pink leviathan continued to watch her, his tail lashing back and forth. Mars shivered and turned her back to him, starting to leave the lab. She shouldn't be wasting time!

She had to find St. James and discover what was wrong with him, not mess around being stupid like her coworkers. She moved through the double doors, leaving her lab coat draped over the chair back at the lab table. Maybe St. James was back at his apartment, number twenty at 473 Daughtrey, or at the Crow's Nest, a pub the two of them had haunted during school; St. James was the type that never talked about his problems, and preferred to fix them by hiding in dark, smokey places and drinking. Without Riley in town, he would be alone. He could do something rash. She went through the door and out into the hallway.

"Poor Horace," she said to herself. A hand pressed on her forehead as she went down the hallway. This was getting strange. He knew that she wouldn't come looking for him, and he could've done anything in the few hours... why did she wait so long? He could be at the bottom of the Hudson River by now, or in a gutter, or whatever happens so often on television. She was so stupid! These people had no idea how to run their lives without her.

_I'll miss you. _

Another shiver went through her body. That was very strange. However, right then she had a job to do, and brushed off the odd feeling she had of cold hands pressing on her shoulders.

###

"Horace is acting really strange."

Dr. Mars twisted the cord of her phone in her fingers, stress bending her into a similar coil. Her hair wasn't done yet, and she hadn't gotten a blink of sleep in thirty hours. Dr. Riley was on the other end, and wasn't taking the news well.

"You say he's been spending a lot of time in the lab?" He asked.

"Hours. I wasn't able to catch up to him after he snapped at me, but his landlady said that he did come home last night. She said he was acting drunk, talking to himself and all sweaty. He didn't come into work today."

There was a sigh over the phone, staticy. Riley didn't sound well, either; his short vacation was stretching over three weeks now, and it didn't seem like he was getting any rest. That was the way he was, always worrying, but she had thought getting away from work for so long would loosen him a _little _bit.

"I should be back in a few days. Maybe he'll talk to me."

"Stop with that!" Mars snapped at him. "I'm just as much his friend as you, Chris. If he won't talk to me, there must be something really wrong."

"You can be a little abrasive sometimes, Melody," Riley said. Mars chuckled.

"You always said that was a good thing."

"I say that because I wish I could be assertive like you," Riley said back. Mars imagined him doing that thing with his eyebrow. "But you wouldn't be the first person I'd go to if I wanted moral support, and that's the truth."

"And you wouldn't be the first person I'd go to if I had a spider in my bathtub," Mars said poisonously.

Frustrated that her conversation with Riley didn't end however she had thought it would end, Mars spent her day off trying to get a hold of St. James. He didn't answer at his apartment, and he wasn't passed out under the bar at the Crow's Nest. Mars wouldn't say that she was truly afraid; that was Riley's job, to worry instead of acting. Maybe she should go down the the aquarium again, see if he was back working on the off day.

Pulling her car up to the lot, Mars was filled with a sense of dread, paranoia. It was cloudy that day, as it had been for the past few days, and very few of the holiday workers had showed up for their shifts. Those useless peons. What about the fish?

Her coat whipped in the late February wind, snapping against her legs and making her feel uneasy, like she was being followed close on her heels. Her sunglasses sat on her forehead, as she was nervous about putting them down and covering her eyes. She kept her hat down low, as if she would avoid some sort of evil by hiding underneath the wide brim that was the style of the time. A black cloud muttered as she put her key in the door and slipped into the rehab building.

It was bitterly cold inside, even colder than it was out. The A/C was going at full blast, buffeting her in the face as she walked in. Removing her hat, Mars glanced around. Normally, even on off days, this building was busy and bustling. Today, it was silent and empty. The hallway was totally quiet except for the buzzing of florescent lights, and the long stretch in front of her was nothing but still air and doors with nothing behind them. Alright, this was getting too strange for her. St. James wasn't here-

"Goodnight, princess!"

Screaming, Mars whipped around to just barely avoid a wrench swung at the back of her head. Her hat tumbled out of her hand, and she watched it be crushed under the untied, scuffed shoe of her attacker. He, however, didn't know what he was dealing with.

Swift as a lightning bolt, a fist was deep in this man's jaw, and a practical-yet-pointed shoe struck a rather soft spot. Before he knew what happened to him, he was disarmed, crippled, and near unconscious.

It was St. James.

Gasping, Mars stepped back, seeing her friend bleeding from his nose and whimpering softly. He had attacked her!

"Why did you do that?" She screamed at him. "What the Hell's wrong with you, Horace?"

He didn't respond. His hands were clamped around his nose, and he was losing consciousness, probably from that third or forth kick to his kidneys and throat. Mars was on her own now, completely unable to understand why her childhood friend had tried to hit her with a wrench. Why?

Mars felt tears threaten. Her friend had tried to kill her.

_Oh no, dearie. He wasn't trying to kill you. He only wanted to make sure you didn't hurt yourself struggling. _

A black mist obscured her vision, roiling and billowing unnaturally, and a colder gust of air hit her face. Gasping, Mars stumbled backward, tripping over St. James and falling flat on her back. She hit the ground softly, as if someone had caught her, and was holding her inches from the ground. Her heart began to beat very, _very _fast. The color drained from her face.

_Don't worry, Dr. Mars. What you see is only an illusion. I'm strong enough to create all sorts of fantasies and phantasms in the eyes of humans now. Just like I've influenced all of your friends, and run this entire facility for several days now, all from my little tank. _

There was a voice in her head. Dr. Mars felt a heavy, black pit form in her stomach as the sound of it's syllables, lilting and cultured with a hint of an unidentifiable and exotic accent, echoed against the inside of her skull. She clenched her eyes shut, trying to banish the toxic mist that was now creeping around her ankles like wicked fingers. Things were wrong.

_You're afraid for the first time in a long while, aren't you, Doctor? I used to be just like you, you know. So confident in reality. So happy with my world view. _

The force keeping her from hitting the ground then pushed her up gently, letting her stand, and the black fog vanished. Mars heard the door behind her click as it locked, and her stomach dropped. This wasn't happening. Rubbing her eyes, she looked between the locked door, St. James's unconscious body, and the door to the lab, which was now hanging open and letting cool air out into the hallway. Taking a deep breath, she avoided conflict and tried the door behind her. Of course, it didn't give way; it really was locked, and the handle was cold enough to burn her hand.

"Ch!"

Clenching her hand, Mars nursed the searing spot. This didn't make sense. She had to be dreaming- but thinking that means that it isn't a dream... oh! Now she was thinking like Riley!

_Thinking like your friend could have saved you, precious._

Suddenly, the whole hallway went black.

A tiny whimper escaped her lips. This voice. This voice that seemed to be staring at her without eyes.

This was real.

For several moments, Dr. Mars stood there, her heart up in her throat, beating into her skull and making her eardrums tense and taut. She breathed, trying to make every breath count.

So much for unfaltering courage being her positive trait, as opposed to her foul temper and unpleasant lack of decorum. Dr. Mars turned white as a sheet and ran.

Through the dark and winding hallways, she ran at full clip, gasping for breath and stumbling like a terrified child. What was happening? _What was happening_? Dr. Mars tried to keep her focus as she ran, but it was impossible, and that was the most frightening to her. She had no idea what to do! The hallways all looked the same! She ran at full clip, her shoes slipping off her feet and tripping her like pitfalls as she dashed though the black fog that was thicker, darker than regular darkness. Doors went by, hundreds of them, but none of them had light under their jams and all were shuttering in their frames, vibrating ominously as if some unimaginable horror was about to explode out into the dark hallway and say, "boo."

_Why are you running? Do you think I'm going to hurt you?_

Dead end.

Outstretched hands hit a cold, flat wall, still roughly textured like the wallpaper that was on all the walls in the employee areas. Now it was completely dark.

_What's wrong?_

Dr. Mars stared at the wall she was touching, but couldn't see. She wasn't really afraid at this point; this was one of those times when you're beyond being scared, and just feel sort of numb. It was warmer now, just a little bit. There was a sound of footsteps.

"Don't be afraid."

A hand went on her shoulder, gentle and human. Dr. Mars swallowed, and wondered what it was like after you die. She also wondered what she was going to do when she woke up from this nightmare and found herself sitting upright in her bed, panting and sweating, but safe.

Turning very slowly, she decided to face the something looming over her, breathing hard and the edges of her vision buzzing.

"There we are. You've overexerted yourself terribly."

A man was standing there. He was smiling gently at her, one hand on her shoulder, the other hanging loosely at his side, visible and weaponless. He was portly, and had a mustache. A rumpled brown suit stuck to him tightly, as it was about two sizes too small. A silver watch chain hung from his pocket, and a nice brown and red scarf was wrapped around his neck.

His free hand stroked back his inky black hair. He continued to smile, but he seemed uncomfortable. He looked back down the dark hallway, then back at her, shuffling from foot to foot.

"Don't be afraid. I know that I am frightful, but you've known me long enough to realize I'd never hurt _you_."

Not knowing what to do, Dr. Mars stared at this completely amiable and kind looking man with hollow eyes. His smile was slowly fading, and a small, sharp tooth popped over his lower lip. His look of quiet indecision and discomfort was familiar, very much like Dr. Riley's. Her hand curled into a fist behind her back, and she looked past him down the hallway, thinking about escape.

"Come on. I'll help you up."

He reached out to her with a stumpy, unusual-looking hand with unkempt nails and shiny skin. That sharp tooth was pinching his gray lip with apprehension. His dark eyes were sad and tired, outlined with bruise black and so bloodshot they looked almost purple. She noticed a scar on his cheek; a badly healed, never-stitched, infected looking scar that made a little pit in his face. There was something about him that made her feel horrible, anxious, and... sad.

Very slowly, Mars got her legs underneath her and carefully extended her hand to the stranger. His smile grew a bit, and she made her move.

Throwing all of her weight into her shoulder, Mars pulled on his hideously slimy hand with all of her strength. Expecting his heft to pull him down, she sprang up and delivered a punch. Two.

Nothing happened.

He was still standing there; her throw hadn't even budged him, and it was as if her punch to his jaw had gone right through him. Mars stared, panting, as he shook his head disapprovingly.

"Don't be like that. You know you can't hurt me."

Grunting, Mars threw another punch, this aimed right at his ugly face. Her fist fazed right past him and into a door, denting it. Now he was standing next to her, his hand on her shoulder. He couldn't be real. Staring in disbelief, Mars continued her attack, and he continued to avoid her with supernatural speed. Her blows always seemed to miss by _this _much, cracking her fist against the wall. She yelped, pulling back and staring at the man, who was frowning sadly with his hands knitted behind his back.

"Your violence isn't going to take you anywhere," he sighed. "If you'd just come along, you'd find that I mean you no harm and only want to help."

Her eyes went up and down this strange figure, taking in his bizarre, old-fashioned clothes that made him look like he had come out of another world: his wing-tip shoes, his pocket watch, his bright gold buttons, his well-trimmed mustache. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she thought he looked a little like Orson Welles.

His hand went out to her again.

"You don't have anywhere else to go," he said in a tone that was like an irritated school teacher's.

His teeth were so sharp. When his face went tense with frustration, she could see outlines of oversized, curving, unnatural molars.

"Please?"

Gritting her teeth, Mars looked at him gravely. Inside, she was scared out of her mind, and her stomach was twisted in knots, while her rational mind was struggling to justify why this was happening-she was too aware for this to be a dream, but there was no way it was real. Real people don't have to deal with this! Their friends don't attack them and their places of work don't turn into fun houses with dark hallways and intangible men that talk in riddles and can't be touched.

This was real. Calmly, she excepted this. After all, this really wasn't any stranger than the conclusion she had come to about her precious Magnus in her notes. His skull, his jaw, and his hips were shaped quite queerly.

She allowed the man to lead her down the hallway. He didn't walk ahead of her, preferring to stay at her side, smiling warmly at her every few minutes, keeping his ugly hands behind his back. He seemed very happy that she was coming with him, to the point that the whole hallway appeared to be getting brighter. The heavy black mist lifted, and now everything was a neutral gray. Mars also noticed that the man walked with a limp.

He led her to the lab doors, which opened on their own. Mars didn't feel the rush of cold air that normally came out of the rehab room; it even felt warm, inviting. She rubbed her eyes. This was insane. She had to be crazy. She was kidnapped and the whole facility was under siege, but something was keeping her from panic. It was like there was nothing wrong; a feeling of safety was wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket.

Her guide vanished. Suddenly, she was alone in a dark room.

_I've missed you so much._

This voice was different. It was so much deeper, darker than the voice of the man, but it was similar. It had a lilting accent of indeterminate origin, and was civil, genteel, but it had a hint of a waiver in its "oo" and "ah" sounds, a sound of madness.

_But I suppose you don't remember me. Look how grown up you are now. _

Who was he talking about? Her?

_You looked at me with such kindness. You were the only kind one. Your voice was gentle and caring when others were snide and cruel. I knew when I saw you drawing in that book, speaking to me in such a familiar voice. I knew that you were my beloved child, lost at sea. _

"Magnus?"

She felt so silly. This was all so very silly! She was going to wake up any moment, gasping in her bed. A deep, chilly fear was growing in the pit of her gut, but she was determined to find out what was happening here, even though it couldn't be real.

_You're right, my child. This isn't real. The things you've seen today are only illusions, created by my abilities. I can make anything. Watch. _

With a flush of light, the room suddenly changed.

She was in a garden now, green and rich with glittering flowers and flowing grass. Tall, crooked trees leaned onto the lawn from the woods beyond, eavesdropping, and a rickety fence stood with character against the weeds. Birds sang, bees buzzed, and everything was perfect and fragrant. Mars gasped, looking around in total surprise, but not pleasure. This was getting very frustrating. She turned around, and saw a dark winged bird perch in a nearby tree. From somewhere far off, a bell tolled. This was getting more and more upsetting.

"Tell me who you are!" She snapped at the invisible voice. She crossed her arms, looking around nervously.

_Aren't you impressed?_

"No."

The scene vanished. The warmth and kindness of the world vanished like smoke, and she was back in the lab. Straight, stable concrete was under her feet, and a bitter, very real cold nipped at her face. Mars almost fell over with the sudden change.

_I am the king now, my dear. I am now the maker of laws. Will you join my court?_

Magnus was in the center of his tank, curled in a ball, his head and shoulders raised up from the bottom as if he were a giant cat. A smile was on his face, an undeniable smile that terrified the brave Doctor Mars.

_I forgive you for abandoning me. Is it not the prophecy of the Lamb to forgive? We are both the same kind, after all. We are lambs of God, chosen ones filled with the wisdom of the people. We are above the dirty surface masses, the cruel, the selfish. We deserve each other's company. _

His eyes followed hers, and he seemed to be reading her mind. He was _talking_! This was quite confounding. Mars brushed off her skirt, looking around, trying to make something make sense. Part of her only wanted to crack a grin: she had been better to their captive than most, so it only made sense that he was thankful. She didn't really know how to react or what to say; perhaps she was less prone to panic than Riley, or perhaps she had always known that there was something special about her favorite fish. Maybe she was in the right! Mars chuckled a little bit, feeling her perception of reality slipping.

_I feel in you a great sense of self-righteousness. You know I am right. You haven't changed at all._

Mars had a feeling of faintness washing over her. She had to get out of here!

Not wanting to stay and listen more, she practically ripped herself from the spot she was standing on and dashed at the door, which then promptly slammed in her face.

_Why are you running?_

A force seemed to pull her back to the center of the room, like the hand of a child tugging on her skirt. Magnus watched her walk back to him, and Mars saw his face become unmistakably sour.

Riley had been right all along. The fact that she had been wrong about this horrible beast, though, was the least of Mars's problems.

_I don't know what Lamb did to you, my child, but I can change this. I'll help you remember who you truly are, and we can rule the surface with your wisdom and kindness. _

"I..." Mars choked. "I..."

_Shush now. _

Mars felt a chilly feeling, and a heaviness in her head. It felt like... it felt exactly how Riley had once described it to her; like cold hands prying and shuffling through her brain like a magazine. But this was different: these hands weren't just looking, they were pulling things, shuffling things around. A sense of artificial calm came over her as her eyes remained locked with the beast's, his staring deeply into her mind.

_I promised I would protect you._

A sinking feeling spread from Mars's feet up to her stomach to her head. It felt like she was taking a drop on the world's largest roller coaster into the world's deepest hole to the very center of the Earth. Her mind was very, very blank-she didn't even know if she was still standing up.

_I promised I would help you. _

Now thinking was impossible. Everything was white noise.

_Now is the time for your reign. I await your guidance. _

She collapsed, her long black hair making a pool around her head. Her glasses fell off, cracking as they hit the ground.

From the other side of room, a pathetic, limping St. James entered without his usual flair. His face was white with pain, and he was clutching his jaw, which was already swollen and purple. His lab coat had pin pricks of blood on it.

"Sorry I'm late... B-Boss..." he stammered. "That chick is _crazy_."

Coughing, he spat out a tooth.

"Crazy. She would'a killed me-"

_Shut up._

"Yessir."

_Good man. Now go and alert the others. We must prepare for the return of the Sacred Daughter. _

Looking up at him stupidly, St. James gaped like a fish. His head went to the side, a sign that his programming had become confused. Sighing, Gil made a note to rework some of his minion's wires, to inform him of the lore of the Family. He would make a great Family member, he was so loyal and obedient.

"Who's the Sacred Daughter?" The man asked.

_She is right there, _Gil replied, indicating the unconscious Mars on the floor with a toss of his great head.

This, of course, only confused St. James more. He said, "That's Dr. Mars. Why is she important?"

_She's no longer your Dr. Mars. I have uncovered her true identity. _

"I didn't know she had a secret identity."

Gil smiled madly, his slash of a mouth becoming a savage bear trap. His sanity was slipping further and further out of his grasp, but right now, everything felt fine. He had finally found the last piece of the puzzle, the thing that would make his whole world normal and logical again. He honestly believed that Dr. Mars was his long lost charge, and there was nothing that could change that at this point. He was mad. Nothing had to make sense. Now that she was here, he no longer had to think. He only needed to follow _her _instructions.

_Neither did she, I'm afraid. But I will remedy that soon enough. She does not remember me, but I shall make her remember. She does not know who she is, but I will teach her. I will fill her mind with all my memories of the Daughter, and remind her of her destiny, just as I have done with you, St. James. _

"Right, Boss. Whatever you say."

_ That's a good boy. Now gather her up, and take her somewhere she will be comfortable. Tend to her every need. She is your new leader. _

"Right."

Without complaint, St. James lifted his former friend and carried her out of the room. Gil watched him through the cameras he had fitted at every corner and every junction of the aquarium, thinking about his endgame. When the two left the building and went out of sight, he retired with a sigh, curling in a corner of his tank.

All was under his control now. The devices he had St. James construct were allowing him to operate every single function of the facility. His mind was extended to every single employee. As far as anyone outside knew, everything was running normally-perhaps the people were acting a bit queer, but that was nothing new. Scientists. They had no idea that all these little drones were extensions of one diabolical consciousness.

In no time at all, he would have command over everything. Then, he would hand the reigns over to the Sacred Daughter. It was perfect. She'd release him, and punish the fools who had done him harm. Then all would be well.

She only needed to be reminded of herself. It wouldn't be hard. His powers could strip her mind clean of this false personality and build it back up from the ground. Whether she really _was _the Sacred Daughter or not.

That didn't matter to him.

He only wanted his Eleanor back.

###

**This chapter needs to make about 20% more sense.**

**I'm not dead! I've risen from the grave just to provide you entertainment! Also, if you're reading this, I am going to haunt you so hard. **

**Oh, our dear Gilbert. He's a little nuts. Are my characters developed enough? I feel like I kind of lost my train of thought in this chapter. I don't know. **

**I'd like to thank my friend Bone Pen for supporting my lazy behind as I wrote this chapter. You are awesome! I know I've already said this enough, but thank you so much for being my friend and a generally amazing person. I hope y'all join me on stage when we win American Idol, accept the Nobel Prize for saving the Chinese river dolphin from extinction, and save the planet from aliens, all to a kickin' dance number. Picture it. Picture it in your mind. Look down, look up. What's in your hand? It's a limited release Subject Omega action figure with rocket launcher and bunny mask. Look again. Your action figure is now a tiny Isaiah Mustafa made of diamonds. **

**And he's on an even tinier horse. **

**HE-YAH! **


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